While it started in the middle of the 15th century, the witch hunt in Europe intensified between 1550 and 1650, decades after other important historical events (the Protestant Reformation, the Peasants’ Revolt) influenced its development. It is right in the middle of these one hundred years of infamy, that the story of Anna Thalberg takes place.

Anna is a woman of singular beauty who is accused of witchcraft and taken by force to Würzburg to be tried. Klaus, her husband, and Friedrich, the village priest, will also travel from Eisingen – the city where they are based – to Würzburg – where Anna has been incarcerated awaiting judgement. They will use all available resources, seeking to stop the blind beast of the Inquisition, which is inexorable in trying to drag the woman to the stake.

Witches, werewolves, family spirits and even a demon who theologizes come together in these pages, but their presence is insufficient to hide the true horror, back then just as today: the inhumanity of the institutions, the manipulations and manufacturing of fear, and the arbitrary evil that nests in the heart of the human being.

 

Winner of the MAURICIO ACHAR Award 2020 – English & French translation available –

The jurors Fernanda Melchor, Cristina Rivera Garza and Julián Herbert called Anna Thalberg: “an exceptional story of witchcraft and persecution that acquires a shockingly contemporary validity and that keeps us engaged with a complex and virtuous handling of the point of view.”

 

“A very absorbing novel showing power mechanisms that are still in force today and where the formal elegance of the narration is transformed into atmosphere and pure feeling. […] Sangarcía’s writing blends a sophisticated feeling for history with penetrating intuition about human consciousness to conjure elegant nightmares. One of the most attractive voices of contemporary Mexican literature.” — Julián Herbert, author of Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino

 “A novel to be read with great emotion and suspense, written with impressive formal virtuosity [… and] an absolutely gripping rhythm.” — Fernanda Melchor, author of Hurricane Season

 “A marvelous work that challenges the reader on multiple levels and communicates directly with our present.” — Cristina Rivera Garza, author of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize-winning Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice

“As bleak as it is beautiful. Sangarcía has given us a story that is breathlessly told, formally innovative, and lays bare our all-too-common tendency towards cruelty, while never foregoing his own humanity. Welcome to a new, luminous voice in literature.” — Elizabeth Gonzalez James, author of The Bullet Swallower

“It is also a trial of the violence that has historically been exercised against women. With a coven of torrential voices, Eduardo Sangarcía lays bare the unreasonableness of a past that also speaks of our present.” — Juan Gómez Bárcena, author of Not Even the Dead

“With an audacious style, the singular use of juxtaposed dialogue, and a structure reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Eduardo Sangarcía achieves a narrative feat that keeps us hooked until the very last line.” — Yoss, author of A Planet for Rent

“With breathless rhythm and a raging as well as plaintive tone… [the novel] builds a magnificent celebration of the feminine!” – Le monde

 “Breathless” – Liberation

“Misogyny and religious conviction are vicious bedfellows in Eduardo Sangarcía’s horrifying, humbling […] inferno of a historical novel, burning through the lies told about defiant women across the centuries.” —Foreword Reviews, Starred Review

“Narrated with the restless, free-associative logic of dreams, and replete with a sense of demonic evil […] the prose moves through time with the same fluidity as that between its shifts of perspective.” — Henry Gifford, Asymptote

“Sangarcía lays bare the horrors in exacting, terrifying detail. Australian writer Bryer is a worthy translator for Sangarcía’s intriguing, rarely punctuated prose […], frightfully inventive and disturbingly accurate for the disconnect between what’s said, heard, and willfully (mis)understood.” — Terry Hong, Booklist, Starred Review

“The prose, lyrical and scarcely punctuated, matches the plot’s frenzied pace. Fans of Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season will love this.” – Publisher’s Weekly

“Challenging the reader to reflect on who wields power and the ways women are still subjected to violence, Sangarcía illuminates the connection between Anna’s plight and that of women fighting for autonomy today. A compelling debut” – Kirkus Reviews

“With a syntax reminiscent of Saramago, dialogues arranged in such a way as to illustrate the confrontation between Anna and the filthy Vogel, [Sangarcía] sucks us into a vortex of hypocrisy, cruelty and horror. Dark and violent chronicle of an announced death, the fact remains that Anna Thalberg has in store for us a finale where logic and lucidity triumph in a terrible way.” – Le Devoir

 “Sangarcía has written a magnificent novel, superb, impressive in power and majesty. A novel that warns us once again against the fanatical defense of GOOD, whatever that is. A first novel with an irresistible rhythm that resembles the work of a seasoned writer.” – Benzine Magazine

 

 

180 pages – Original language: Spanish (Penguin Random House Mexico, 2021). Foreign Editions: French (La peuplade, 2023), North American English (Restless Books, 2024), Spanish/Spain (Mapa Editorial, 2024)