The Trial of Anna Thalberg

August 5, 2024
Mexican writer Sangarcía’s fierce English-language debut portrays the misogynistic violence and religious rapture of a witch trial in the 16th-century Holy Roman Empire. Anna Thalberg, a 22-year-old peasant born to a family of devout Catholics, is taken from Eisingen to Würzburg to be prosecuted for witchcraft, having aroused suspicion because she has red hair and because of her status as an outsider. One of her neighbors, Gerda, becomes jealous of Anna’s youth and beauty, and denounces her, claiming she’s seen Anna riding a “wild goat back-to-front.” More testimonies follow, in which other neighbors swear Anna has lain with the devil, provoked miscarriages, and tempted local men into carnal sin. Sangarcía pulls together an astute account of Anna’s trial and sheds light on how witch hunts were rooted in the hatred and suspicion of women (“little girls like you only bring misfortunes and calamities”). The prose, lyrical and scarcely punctuated, matches the plot’s frenzied pace. Fans of Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season will love this. (Sept.)Correction: A previous version of this review mistakenly described Sangarcía as a Guatemalan writer.

Starred review from September 1, 2024
"I knew no evil until I entered this prison, until I came face to face with the examiner, with that perverse, cruel monster," Anna Thalberg insists to confessor priest Hahn, who promises her redemption if she will "renounce Satan and all his seductions." Without warning, Anna was grabbed from her kitchen, chained, hooded, and dragged away, her neighbors silently watching. She's taken to W�rzburg, ecclesiastical center of the Holy Roman Empire during the Protestant Reformation, where she's imprisoned, heinously tortured, and condemned to burn at the stake as a witch. Jealous villager Gerda's accusations won't go ignored, inflamed by memories of all the men's, including Gerda's husband's, gaze on redheaded, honey-eyed Anna's arrival as Klaus' bride. Gerda feeds her allegations to examiner Melchior Vogel, insatiably ready to wield his merciless injustice. Upon finding his wife gone, his meager hut looted, Klaus beseeches intervention from their village priest, Friedrich, who is facing his own demons. With attestations of Anna's (impossible) destructions multiplying, her cruel fate seems sealed. Mexican writer Sangarc�a lays bare the horrors in exacting, terrifying detail. Australian writer Bryer is a worthy translator for Sangarc�a's intriguing, rarely punctuated prose; his side-by-side two-columned non-confessions between Anna and Hahn are particularly, frightfully inventive and disturbingly accurate for the disconnect between what's said, heard, and willfully (mis)understood.

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September 15, 2024
Anna Thalberg is the red-haired peasant woman at the center of this witch trial, set in the Holy Roman Empire during the Protestant Reformation. Resented by the villagers for her otherworldly beauty, Anna is accused of witchcraft by a jealous neighbor who suspects that darkness lurks underneath her good looks. Dragged from her home, Anna finds herself locked in a prison tower in the nearby city of W�rzburg. The only people determined to prove her innocence are her husband, Klaus, and Father Friedrich, a Catholic priest navigating his own crisis of faith. Isolated in her cell, Anna is tortured by a sadistic guard as Klaus and Friedrich appeal desperately to the powerful men holding her there; Anna will burn at the stake should they fail. Outside the prison, reports of strange goings-on within W�rzburg's city walls are growing. Religious persecution, the dangers posed by spreading superstition, and the myriad ways in which characters suffer can make this book feel bleak--but the suspense of Anna's dwindling time propels it relentlessly forward. Although on the surface this is a novel concerned with the supernatural, its underlying concerns are about the historical oppression of women, the dehumanizing effects of institutions, the mundanity of evil, and--at its core--the question whether God truly exists. The author sometimes adopts a deliberately jarring, offbeat rhythm to shake the reader out of the reverie his often-poetic text may lull them into. With echoes of Olga Tokarczuk'sThe Books of Jacob and A.K. Blakemore'sThe Manningtree Witches, Mexican author Sangarc�a's debut novel draws on themes that continue to inspire authors across the world. Challenging the reader to reflect on who wields power and the ways women are still subjected to violence, Sangarc�a illuminates the connection between Anna's plight and that of women fighting for autonomy today. A compelling debut, tracing a direct line from women in the past to those in the present.

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