Simplicius Simplicissimus
A peasant boy whose farm is burned by foraging soldiers in the Thirty Years War is taken in by a hermit in the woods, taught to read, then turned out into a Germany where every army lives off whatever it passes and the harmless starve first. He survives as a regimental fool, a raider, a courted favorite and an outright fraud, answering to whatever name the world hands him. The first great German novel, written by a man who had been a soldier's boy himself, and the quarry every later German writer on war has gone back to.
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Lineage
- influenced by ↑ Lazarillo de Tormes
- ↓ Mother Courage and Her Children
Attributes
Plot structure
Symbol / motif
Conflict
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 53% · 14 shared
- 52% · 14 shared
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- 43% · 12 shared