Centroeuropa

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLIST
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE

Revelations--and frozen corpses--multiply in a small, European village

"Male, Prussian, hussar soldier, frozen. That was the first body I found while digging in the frozen earth to bury my wife."

At the dawn of the nineteenth century, European feudalism is starting to crumble. Newly widowed, Redo Hauptshammer arrives in a small town far from home to claim a plot of arable land and the simple life of a farmer. But when Redo begins to dig up the field, the perfectly preserved, frozen corpse of a soldier emerges. The next day, Redo uncovers two more soldiers, dressed in uniforms of an earlier age. And then there are more.

As bodies from past and future wars proliferate exponentially, Redo enlists the aid of eccentric villagers, but risks exposing a precious personal secret and the great love at the heart of it. What will be excavated and what will remain buried?

Subtle, subversive, and full of surprises, this ingeniously structured novel heralds a talented writer whose experimentations in style are as dazzling as his humane, spirited story of oppression, erasure, and endurance.