Krabat and the Sorcerer's Mill

Otfried Preussler

sht 2014 · New York Review of Books

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“One of my favorite books.” —Neil Gaiman 

The classic fairytale of a young boy’s quest for freedom from a powerful sorcerer, darkly atmospheric and filled with magic and adventure

New Year’s has passed. Twelfth Night is almost here. Krabat, a fourteen-year-old beggar boy dressed up as one of the Three Kings, is traveling from village to village singing carols. One night he has a strange dream in which he is summoned by a faraway voice to go to a mysterious mill—and when he wakes he is irresistibly drawn there. At the mill he finds eleven other boys, all of them, like him, the apprentices of its Master, a powerful sorcerer, as Krabat soon discovers.

During the week the boys work ceaselessly grinding grain, but on Friday nights the Master initiates them into the mysteries of the ancient Art of Arts. One day, however, the sound of church bells and of a passing girl singing an Easter hymn penetrates the boys’ prison: At last a plan is set in motion that will win them their freedom and put an end to the Master’s dark designs. 

Krabat & the Sorcerer’s Mill was one of Cornelia Funke’s most beloved books as a child, and it is easy to see why. It is a wondrous story of magic, black and white; of courage and cunning; and of high adventure.

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Otfried Preussler (1923–2013) was born into a family of teachers in Reichenberg, Czechoslovakia, and as a boy loved listening to the folktales of the region, including the old Sorbian tale of the sorcerer’s apprentice, upon which Krabat & the Sorcerer’s Mill is based. Drafted into the army during World War II, Preussler was captured in 1944 and spent the next five years as a prisoner of war in the Tatar Republic. After his release, he moved to Bavaria and became a primary-school teacher and principal, supplementing his income by working as a reporter for a local newspaper and by writing scripts for children’s radio. One of the most popular authors for children in Germany, Preussler was twice awarded the German Children’s Book Prize. His many books have been translated into fifty-five languages and have sold over fifty million copies. New York Review Books will also publish Preussler’s The Little Witch, The Robber Hotzenplotz, and The Little Water Sprite. 

Anthea Bell is a renowned translator from the German, French, and Danish, and the winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize, and, three times over, the Marsh Award for Children’s Literature in Translation. She has translated Asterix, Hans Christian Andersen, Cornelia Funke, Kerstin Gier, W.G. Sebald, Sigmund Freud, and several novels by Stefan Zweig, including Confusion and Journey into the Past, both available as New York Review Books Classics. She lives in the United Kingdom.