The Trial of Anna Thalberg

Translated by Elizabeth Bryer

**Shortlisted, NSW Literary Awards 2025, Translation Prize**

The witch hunt in Europe intensified between 1550 and 1650, decades after the Protestant Reformation and the Peasants' Revolt. It is right in the middle of these one hundred years of infamy that Anna Thalberg's story takes place.

Anna is a woman of singular beauty who is accused of witchcraft and taken by force to be tried. Klaus, her husband, and Friedrich, the village priest, will also travel to Wrzburg, where Anna has been incarcerated. They will use all available resources, seeking to stop the blind beast of the Inquisition, which is inexorable in trying to drag the woman to the stake.

Witches, werewolves, family spirits and even a demon who theologizes come together in these pages, but their presence is insufficient to hide the true horror: the inhumanity of the institutions, their manipulations and manufacturing of fear, and the arbitrary evil that nests in the heart of human beings.