'Yoss', Odo Hirsch's first novel for adults of all ages, tells the dramatic, haunting tale of an innocent village boy's encounter with the corrupt life of a mediaeval town.
Like all the other lads in his village, Yoss leaves home on a symbolic journey to become a man. Unlike the others, he travels to the far side of the great lake that separates his mountain home from the rest of the world, and falls in with two fraudulent characters, Conrad and Gaspar, who make a living by trickery and cheating at cards. Gaspar has the lightning fingers, Conrad has the cunning.
Yoss becomes an unwitting accomplice in the robbery of a merchant. Later, when they reach the town, the merchant finds them and has Conrad and Gaspar thrown into jail while he takes Yoss into his own household as a slave. What follows, in the interweaving of Yoss's life with the characters around him - the merchant's wife, Garner Zeb the foreman, the painter, the doctor - is an intriguing parable about innocence and experience.
Everyone is drawn to Yoss; many want to use him for their own ends. The result is tragedy, with Conrad and the merchant as opposing forces in an intense, haunting, highly individual story.
