Sputnik, the Virgin Mary, a murder... 1957. In the secluded Eastern European village of Baia Luna, life orbits around church, work, home and the pub. This is very much the case for fifteen-year-old Pavel Botev - that is, until the seismic shift of world politics is felt even in his small community. When Communist party officials arrive and claim Baia Luna for the Soviet Union, Pavel's schoolteacher commits grisly suicide. Piecing together her diaries, Pavel slowly unravels the tragic story of his schoolteacher's affair with an ambitious party official and, on the very last page, he finds a single scrawled message - Send him to hell. Naturally, Pavel promises his dead teacher that he'll do just that. Meanwhile, crackled radio reports of the US-Soviet space race keep the villagers occupied and somewhat imaginative; when the statue of the Virgin Mary is stolen from the chapel, Pavel's grandfather and his gypsy best friend assume the obvious - that the Russians have kidnapped it and sent it to the moon. It seems farfetched, but when the old man mysteriously disappears, it seems that maybe the Kremlin really has taken an extraordinary interest in an ordinary place, and only Pavel stands in the way...
"Fabulous... This bizarre and anarchistic book is enormously entertaining and deservedly successful... Since Bernard Schlink no German novelist has received nearly as much international attention"
Die Welt
"A dazzling book, larger than life, exuberantly picturesque... German literature has a new powerful voice - and most of all an unusual one"
Focus
"Rolf Bauerdick is a natural born narrator. The fierce realism of his story spoils neither its magic nor its humour"
