Multiple bookends (much like Heart of Darkness) bring the reader to the core story of a young inexperienced priest in the 1980s(?) who is sent to a remote village in Switzerland (Graubünden region, I think). He's an outsider in this town where everyone knows everything about everyone else, and weirdly, they are all writing books. Memoirs, novels, non-fiction, everyone has a manuscript in the works. When their village comes to notice, a mysterious publishing representative from Luzern in a big black car shows up looking for the next Swiss literature masterpiece. Havoc ensues, and our young priest finds himself caught in the middle of it.

How I Discovered This: In 2021 I came across TripFiction.com (a fun website), and this was the first entry for Switzerland. As someone who has been trying to explore current Swiss fiction, this was a find. However, it's written by an Italian author who just happened to set his book in Switzerland.

Why I Read This Now: I was on a trip to Luzern, Switzerland to see Fasnacht (Carnival). This was a bucket list event since the 1980s when I saw a friend's pictures from Fasching somewhere in Germany. The stars aligned for me to take this perfect trip. I thought this was the best book to take along. I read most of it relaxing on a waterbed in the quiet room at my daughter's spa in Luzern on a sunny Sunday afternoon. I will keep this to read again in the future, as I'm interested in depictions of the devil in literature and art.

Rating: 4 stars. After I bought this in 2021, I saw reader reviews weren't great, despite the published accolades. I don't know why readers don't like this because I thought it was terrific.

Recommended for: a wide audience, actually. ( )

Questo breve romanzo o lungo racconto sembra provenire da un passato piuttosto remoto, ha in se un'eleganza che raramente si vede ai giorni nostri. Pur non terrorizzando ha il grande potere di lasciare fortemente disorientati e di instillare un pungolo, che poco ha a che fare con la razionalità. Anche se senza dubbio, il male lo si trova sempre nell'animo dell'uomo, mischiato a peccati più o meno dannosi per gli altri e per se stessi.
Si legge in poco tempo ed è molto scorrevole. ( )

A priest takes up a pastoral post in a Swiss mountain village, where he uncovers a bizarre secret: almost every resident harbours dreams of being a published writer. The swine gelder is a passionate poet, the grocer is the author of a sci-fi trilogy, and the former minister has several volumes of memoirs stuffed into the desk drawer. So far, none of them has been published – but one day, someone new arrives in town promising to make all their dreams come true…a publisher whom the priest believes to be none other than the devil himself.

This book has a decidedly literary-European feel, combining a light and witty tone with a sense – perhaps clear from the synopsis above – of rather laboured allegory. As the devil/publisher sets about pitting all the locals against one another, we seem to be building up to a play on authorial vanity and the dangers of the literary project:

“Each time we pick up a pen we are preparing to perform a ritual for which two candles should always be lit: one white and one black. Unlike painting and sculpture, which remain anchored to a material subject, and to music, which in contrast transcends matter altogether, literature can dominate both spheres: the concrete and the abstract, the terrestrial and the otherworldly.”

And a lot of this is indeed quite good fun, not least the knowingly Gothic atmosphere, all moonless nights, remote village inns, and woods howling with rabid foxes. Translator Anne Milano Appel takes this on with gusto, though a couple of her vocabulary choices seem a little odd (the priest's hat which is called a saturno in Italian she translates as ‘saturn’ in English, a word I've never seen and which doesn't appear in any dictionary I own – we seem to use the Italian word, or call it a ‘cappello romano’).

The danger with any book about literary vainglory is that it invites the same sceptical attention on itself that it is gleefully scattering upon its subject; positioning itself in a world where ‘even the most banal thoughts—as long as they are printed in type—are accepted as absolute truth’. Well, quite. How well A Devil Comes to Town holds up under this attention will depend on your own appetite for light, quasi-philosophical novellas. I liked it, I must confess, but I hope Maurensig didn't sell any souls to get it into print. ( )

Mah, è un libro strano e in tutta franchezza credo gli piaccia anche esserlo.
Alla fine è una storiellina per bambini con un tono un po' troppo cupo e la pretesa di prendersi molto sul serio. ( )