Title: Centroeuropa
Author: Vicente Luis Mora
Translator: Rahul Bery
Pages: 192
Release: March 10, 2026
Awards: National Book Award for Translated Literature shortlist (2026)
A wonderfully strange tale with an incredibly endearing protagonist. Centroeuropa centers on Redo Hauptshammer, the first free farmer to settle in a small Prussian village beside the Oder River. While digging a plot for his recently departed wife, Redo unearths groups of frozen dead soldiers from conflicts past and seemingly yet to come. Redo erects walls, both literal and figurative, to keep his discovery and his own secrets from the quirky cast of townsfolk inhabiting the surrounding hills.
Redo recounts the whole ordeal in his charming and often unreliable manner, complete with a sprinkling of the fantastical: a local witch who can see the future, a giant of fluctuating size, and Redo’s ever-expanding collection of frozen bodies.
The novel confronts the thornier edges of progress while quite literally digging up the past. History clings stubbornly to Redo’s plot of land, leaving him yoked to the past even as he struggles to cultivate a new life.
If you want a companion story (also in translation), this time from the perspective of a frozen corpse who thaws out, I recommend Strange and Perfect Account from the Permafrost.
★★★★
