The Legend of the Tear Jugglers

Nobody knows from where they come, the five mysterious figures who make their way through a central Europe torn asunder by wars and epidemics, pogroms and struggles for freedom, performing works of art with their tears. Their clapped-out old carriage can always be found wherever people are plagued by misfortune and violence. Who are these tear jugglers?

Whatever, the world they are bemoaning has traits very similar to that of today. Though set in Turkish-occupied Hungary of the 16th / 17th centuries, this is not a historical novel. The story of the main character Franz Pillinger is weaved into a poetic cosmos, in which fantastic elements are reported just as succinctly as the commotion that calls itself politics. Darvasi describes hundreds of types of love and death, of sympathy and inhumanity, an encyclopedic epic of the turmoil of European history, which is with us just as much today.