Walser
2014 Longlist

Mesmerized

Translated from the original German by Jamie Bulloch
artwork-image

ABOUT
THE BOOK

Mozart’s Vienna. A crucible for scientific experimentation and courtly intrigue, as Europe’s finest minds vie for imperial favour.

In a colourful, chaotic private hospital that echoes with the shrieks of hysterical patients, Franz Anton Mesmer is developing a series of controversial cure-alls for body and mind.

When he is asked to help restore the sight of a blind musical prodigy favoured by the Empress herself, he senses that fame, and even immortality, is within his grasp. Mesmer knows that he will have to gain her trust if he is to open her eyes. But at what cost to her fragile talent? And will their intimacy result in scandal?

 

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Alissa
Walser

Alissa Walser is a writer, translator and painter living in Frankfurt am Main. She is the author of three volumes of short stories, and for her first novel Mesmerized she was awarded the Spycher Literaturpreis in 2010.

Alissa Walser is a writer, translator and painter living in Frankfurt am Main. She is the author of three volumes of short stories, and for her first novel Mesmerized she was awarded the Spycher Literaturpreis in 2010.

ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Jamie
Bulloch

Jamie Bulloch is the translator of novels by Timur Vermes, Birgit Vanderbeke, Arno Geiger, Steven Uhly, Robert Menasse and Roland Schimmelpfennig, and of crime novels by Romy Hausmann, Sebastian Fitzek and Oliver Bottini. For his translation of Birgit Vanderbeke’s The Mussel Feast he was the winner of the Schlegel-Tieck Prize.

Jamie Bulloch is the translator of novels by Timur Vermes, Birgit Vanderbeke, Arno Geiger, Steven Uhly, Robert Menasse and Roland Schimmelpfennig, and of crime novels by Romy Hausmann, Sebastian Fitzek and Oliver Bottini. For his translation of Birgit Vanderbeke’s The Mussel Feast he was the winner of the Schlegel-Tieck Prize.

NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

Mesmerized is a subtle, touching novel, written in a language full of music. Vienna in the late 1700s – the story of the German physician Franz Mesmer who practiced the movement of life energy through the body with the help of magnets to cure patients.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Date published
07/06/2012
Country
Germany
Original Language
German
Author
Publisher
MacLehose Press
Translator
Jamie Bulloch
Translation
Translated from the original German by Jamie Bulloch

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