The Madonna on the Moon

'Since Bernard Schlink no German novelist has received nearly as much international attention' Die Welt

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...

Rolf Bauerdick was born in 1957. He studied literature and theology before turning to journalism and photography. His work has been awarded numerous prizes, among them Germany's prestigious Hansel Mieth Prize. His articles have been published in Der Spiegel,Geo, and Playboy, among other publications. He lives in a converted flour mill in Northern Germany with his wife and children. The Madonna on the Moon, his first novel, won the European Book Award.

Translated from the German by David Dollenmayer.