Traveler of the Century by Andrés Neuman

Sophie and her father host a salon every Friday afternoon. But when Hans meets Sophie Gottlieb, who charms him and us, his decision to leave easier to put off. He and the organ grinder debate the topic often. Indeed, for the first time in his life, he is questioning whether staying or leaving is best. Interestingly, Wandernburg’s shifting coordinates actually lend it a timeless feel, and while streets change around them, the characters by contrast feel relatively fixed (just an illusion), something that Hans has never experienced before.

He meets friends, including an old organ grinder (one of my favorite characters in some time) who lives out in a cave and plays his organ every day in the market square, which, though the rest of the city streets seem to shift position through the night, always remains at the center of Wandernburg. Hans misses the coach out of town and decides to stay another day at the inn run by Herr Zeit (Mister Time) - then another day, and another, etc. Hans is a wanderer himself, never staying anywhere long, never feeling nostalgia for “he preferred to think about his next journey.”īut Wandernburg is perhaps harder to leave than it is to enter. But he does arrive, planning to stay only a night or two. Though he can see it out the window of his carriage for some time, his driver cannot tell him when (or if) they’ll get there, Wandernburg being one of those strange cities that moves around on the map somewhere between Saxony and Prussia. Traveler of the Century, which probably takes place sometime in the late 1820s, begins as Hans approaches the city of Wandernburg. Review copy courtesy of Farrar Straus Giroux.

Traveler of the Century by Andrés Neuman