The Crooked Maid: A Novel - Softcover

Vyleta, Dan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1620403668 ISBN 13: 9781620403662

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2014

Synopsis

Vienna, 1948. The war is over, and as the initial phase of denazification winds down, the citizens of Vienna struggle to rebuild their lives amidst the rubble.

Anna Beer returns to the city she fled nine years earlier upon discovering her husband's infidelity. She has come back to find him and, perhaps, to forgive him. Traveling on the same train from Switzerland is eighteen-year-old Robert Seidel, a schoolboy summoned home to his stepfather's sickbed and the secrets of his family's past.

As Anna and Robert navigate a damaged, unrecognizable city, they cross paths with a war-widowed American journalist, a hunchbacked young girl, and a former POW whose primary purpose is to survive, by any means. Meanwhile, in the shells of burned-out houses and beneath the bombed-out ruins, a ghost of a man, his head wrapped in a red scarf, battles demons from his past and hides from a future deeply uncertain for all.

In The Crooked Maid, Dan Vyleta returns to the shadows of a war-darkened Vienna, in a thrilling and atmospheric story of blame, guilt, and restitution.

About this title

About the Author

Dan Vyleta is the son of Czech refugees who emigrated to Germany in the late 1960s. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Cambridge. His previous novels, Pavel & I and The Quiet Twin, were published to international acclaim. Vyleta lives in Canada and the United States.
www.danvyleta.com

From Booklist

Novels about post-WWII Europe offer fascinating possibilities. Political lines are being redrawn, societies are rebuilding from the rubble, and chickens are coming home to roost. The Crooked Maid focuses on a group of characters converging on Vienna after a long absence. Anton Beer is headed home after years in a Russian POW camp. His estranged wife, Anna, is coming from Paris to meet him. The young man Robert, who shares Anna’s train, is coming home after his stepfather has fallen—or been pushed—from a high window. These and many other characters are drawn together at the trial of Robert’s stepbrother, accused of pushing his father, and by the search for Anton, who has gone missing. The novel has some trappings of a murder mystery but is more of a psychological novel, as the characters—from the eponymous crippled maid to the war-enriched matriarch—try to ferret out the truth from others while guarding their own secrets. This novel conjures up the stifling atmosphere of shame and deception of the postwar period and hints at escape through Vienna’s own “talking cure”—openness and honesty. --Lynn Weber

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1620403668
• ISBN 13: 9781620403662
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448