Safe Return Doubtful

Translated by Ross Benjamin. 

However Kehlmann came across the idea to write a novel about someone who tried to make people laugh and smile during the Thirty Years’ War I can’t imagine, but the result is a tremendous read, and even fun, in places at least. Between 1618 and 1648 there were 8 million casualties, many from the conflict, but many more from the famine and plague. It was almost three hundred years until Europe could match horror on a similar scale.

But Kehlmann is careful not to undermine these barbaric years, and cleverly meanders between horror and humour with a cast of likeable fools and deficient strategists. Actual historical characters feature quite frequently in semblances that veer between silly and farcical. Those Kehlmann has the least respect for, often the religious characters, seem to get the worst of it. For example, a Jesuit scholar, Athanasius Kircher, is portrayed as being obsessed with magic spells, and has a group that follow him taking down his every word..

Kircher had grasped early on that one had to follow reason without being flustered by the quirks of reality. When one knew how an experiment had to turn out, then the experiment had to turn out like that, and when one possessed a distinct conception of things, then, when one described them, one had to satisfy this conception and not mere observation.

It’s a riot in the best sense of the word, like a mix of an updated Carry On film and Horrible Histories, but very much for adults. It’s early, but the stand-out novel of the year so far.