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Tell
It is perhaps the most famous legend in Swiss history – the story of William Tell – and Joachim B. Schmidt transforms it into a page-turner, a thriller, an event: Constructed from nearly a hundred fast-paced scenes and featuring twenty different protagonists, the narrative races towards its explosive showdown like a lit fuse. Neither a retelling nor a rehash, this is a blockbuster of a book: think The Revenant in the Alps or Game of Thrones in Altdorf.
288 pages
2022
978-3-257-07200-6
»With this novel, Joachim B. Schmidt has shattered the pedestal the Swiss have placed their national hero on, while also making that hero into a human being.«
»This fresh version of an old story reinvigorates enthusiasm for a classic.«
»A Tell story that’s filled with suspense, and a showdown reminiscent of a Tarantino film.«
»In this novel, for the first time, vignettes become human beings, complete with all their contradictions; even the worst berserkers become relatable, despite their misdeeds.«
»This is the original Swiss blockbuster - Diogenes hasn’t overexaggerated.«
»Endless cliffhangers, twenty different perspectives, narrated at breakneck speed, sometimes by the grandmother, sometimes by the son Walter, rarely by Tell himself.«
»The book is a page turner that you just can't put down.«
»His Tell is a psychological thriller with a cinematic, popcorn-worthy showdown.«
»In his new novel, Tell, he returns to his homeland to reimagine the ancient Swiss legend of William Tell in a sublime new way – namely, with all the excitement of a western.«
»218 years after Schiller, Joachim B. Schmidt pulls apart the legend of William Tell, rearranges its component parts, and turns it into a storm of perspectives that reverberates for a long while.«
»For anyone after an exciting read, and willing to be persuaded that the story of William Tell can work as a thriller.«
»In this book, Tell is only reluctantly a freedom fighter – Schmidt wanted to create a realistic Tell.«
»Driven from cliff-hanger to cliff-hanger by its staccato narrative style, this is literary fare to be devoured with great enjoyment.«
»He allows the characters surrounding his shady protagonist to take it in turns to have their say, turning this well-known legend into a psychological kaleidoscope.«
»Tell is one of the best books of the season.«
»So he is a modern Tell, which may also be so convincing exactly because it was not written in Switzerland, but with a lot of distance in Iceland.«
»These sequences are very short and often breathtakingly tense; one cliffhanger follows the next.«
»The modern way of analyzing people and an archaic-looking Middle Age combine to create a novel that is bitter, polyphonic - and yet heartbreakingly moving and beautiful.«
»Anyone who reads it will love it as much as we do.«