Krabat
core novel 1971 Krabat
Record
| Original title | Krabat |
|---|---|
| First published | 1971 |
| Original language |  DE |
| First English translation | 1972 |
| Translator | Anthea Bell |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.91 (26,613 ratings, collected 2026-08-27) |
| Page count | 296 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9781681377919 |
Synopsis
A fourteen-year-old Wendish beggar boy named Krabat is drawn by a recurring dream to a remote watermill in early eighteenth-century Saxony, where a sinister one-eyed miller takes him on as an apprentice alongside eleven other young men. Krabat soon discovers that the mill is in truth a black school teaching sorcery, and that the apprentices are bound together, and to the miller, by a dark and dangerous pact renewed each New Year's Eve, when one of their number dies and is replaced by a new arrival drawn by the same dream that brought Krabat. As Krabat grows more skilled in the miller's magic, he begins to realize that escaping the mill, and the pact that holds its apprentices, may cost him more than he first understood.
Where it sits
- Universe: Krabat
- Series: not part of a registered series (standalone work within its universe)
- Author: Otfried Preussler
Awards (verified)
- Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis (Novel), 1972: won
Notes
- A dispossessed young apprentice at a mysterious watermill is drawn into a dangerous magical pact, in a story drawn from Sorbian folklore. Won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis (German prize for youth literature) in 1972.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Krabat (novel)
- Wikipedia: Otfried Preussler
- Arbeitskreis fur Jugendliteratur e.V.: Krabat entry (Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis, official)
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