Joy of Sorcery

de Sten Nadolny, Breon and Lynda Mitchell

"As a young boy in Germany before the First World War, Pahroc discovers that he has special abilities. He can lengthen his arm at will, reaching out to pluck a cherry ten feet away; he can absorb all of the information in a book by placing two fingers on its spine; he can appear to others in the form of a crocodile: He is a sorcerer. Pahroc finds his own community of sorcerers, including Emma, the woman he marries, and as the years pass, he becomes one of the great masters of his secret calling. He works as a radio technician, then an inventor, then a psychotherapist, and the outside world never knows that he can fly through the air unassisted or walk through walls. Being able to temporarily turn to steel or conjure money from nothing prove crucial to surviving and ushering his growing family through the Second World War. Now, at 106, Pahroc's greatest concern is passing on his art to his infant granddaughter Mathilda, the only one of his many descendants to have revealed talents like his own. In the twelve letters which form this book, he writes down his life for her. It is the witty, endearing, and surprising story of a man with his own special way of resisting the disenchantment of the world"-- Pahroc writes about his extraordinary life in twentieth-century Germany for his young granddaughter, who, like him, has secret magical abilities.