Ezra's Bookshelf

Gretel and the Great War

by Adam Sachs

FictionHistory

Recommended on

buy on bookshop.org →
Adam Sachs structures his debut novel as an alphabetical journey through the dark side of early twentieth-century Vienna. Each of the twenty-six chapters begins with a successive letter, creating a fragmented narrative that captures a disintegrating world. The book follows Gretel, a young woman coming of age as the Great War transforms European society, through encounters with artists, soldiers, and the grotesque carnival of Vienna's avant-garde. Sachs, who worked as a food writer before turning to fiction, brings precise sensory attention to a city famous for its pleasures even as empire collapses around it. The novel draws on Vienna's rich cultural moment—Freud, Klimt, Schiele, Mahler—while focusing on characters obscured by history rather than the famous figures themselves. The alphabetical structure creates both constraints and freedoms, allowing Sachs to arrange scenes for thematic resonance rather than strict chronology. The book explores how war penetrates domestic life, how artistic movements respond to catastrophe, and how young people find their way when old certainties vanish. This is an ambitious literary debut that announces a distinctive voice.

For fans of

Reviews