Before the Feast

A dazzling, award-winning new novel by the 'offensively gifted' author of How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

It's the night before the feast in the village of Fürstenfelde (population: an odd number). The village is asleep. Except for the ferryman - he's dead. And Mrs Kranz, the night-blind painter, who wants to depict her village for the first time at night. A bell-ringer and his apprentice want to ring the bells - the only problem is that the bells have gone. A vixen is looking for eggs for her young, and Mr Schramm is discovering more reasons to quit life than smoking.

Someone has opened the doors to the Village Archive, but what drives the sleepless out of their houses is not that which was stolen, but that which has escaped. Old stories, myths and fairy tales are wandering about the streets with the people. They come together in a novel about a long night, a mosaic of village life, in which the long-established and newcomers, the dead and the living, craftsmen, pensioners and noble robbers in football shirts bump into each other. They all want to bring something to a close, in this night before the feast.

The highly regarded and bestselling author Saša Stanišic was born in 1978 in what was then Yugoslavia (now Bosnia and Herzegovina), and currently lives in Germany. Before the Feast, his second novel, was a bestseller in Germany and won the prestigious Leipzig Book Fair Prize; his award-winning debut How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone has been translated into 30 languages, and is also published by Pushkin Press.



The award-winning novelist Saša Stanišic was born in Višegrad, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1978 and has lived in Germany since 1992. His debut novel How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone was acclaimed by readers and critics alike, and has been translated into 30 languages so far. Before the Feast, his second novel, won the 2014 Leipzig Book Fair Prize, was longlisted for the German Book Prize, and won the Alfred-Döblin and Hohenemser literary prizes.