Madonna on the Moon

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An award-winning journalist channels his fascination with the Gypsies into a whimsical and suspenseful debut novel, which has garnered the European Book Prize and been translated into over a dozen languages. Set in November 1957, as Communism spreads in Eastern Europe, the small village of Baia Luna, nestled in the Carpathian Mountains, experiences unsettling changes. Fifteen-year-old Pavel Botev attends school with his peers, taught by the enigmatic Angela Barbulescu, whose cultured past is shrouded in mystery. One day, after enlisting Pavel's help to hang a photo of the new party secretary, she whispers a shocking command: "Send this man straight to hell! Exterminate him!" By morning, she vanishes. With only the rumors circulating in his grandfather Ilja's tavern to guide him, Pavel's curiosity overcomes his fear. When the village's sacred Madonna statue is stolen and priest Johannes Baptiste is found murdered, Pavel, alongside the Gypsy girl Buba and her quirky uncle Dimitru Gabor, embarks on a quest for answers. This journey propels him beyond the innocence of childhood and into the complexities of a changing world, forever altering his life.