Mladenka kostonoga

In Vienna in 1882 a gusle player from Zadar named Želimir Periš is arrested, beaten and questioned for composing an epic about the witch Gila. So begins the tale of Mladenka Gila, known as Kostonoga, a healer and herbalist hunted through the 19th century together with her child, Carević. It ranges from the Herzegovinian border and the Dalmatian hinterland to Zadar with its silk works and workers' revolt, the island of Silba and the castle of Pazin, and on to the court intrigues, opium dens and spiritualist salons of imperial Vienna. Its fifty-odd chapters, each introduced by ten-syllable folk verse, take the form of inquisition records, sermons, encyclopaedia entries, recipes, music reviews, ethnographic notes or an interactive game. Comic and grotesque, yet harrowing, it is above all a story of women's place, motherhood, injustice and pain in an age of awakening nations.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

445 pages in the original

Genres

Historical (assigned by AI)

Set in

Croatia, Austria, 19th century

First published

2020 by OceanMore

Author's age

45 when first published

ISBN

9789533321073 (original)