Spoil the Harvest

For readers of Nelio Biedermann's Lázárand Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona, from a dazzling new voice in European literature, this compact, magical realism epic tells the story of a rural farming family living on the edge of the German empire through the eyes of its final descendant. The story begins with my great-grandmother, born a farmer's daughter on the first day of the new century in a village on the North Sea. Alma has grown up on her family's stories. The sowing in the spring, the haymaking in summer, the potato harvest in autumn. The day Grandmother heard the planes come, and knew the war had begun. The dark-eyed Austrian soldier who approached her as she walked home from the baker's. Now, as the last in the family line, Alma weaves together the gem-like detritus of the family's favorite stories—lists, recipes, superstitions, lullabies and more—in an attempt to understand what the women before her left unsaid.