The Satanic Mill

Krabat and the Sorcerer's Mill

Author	Otfried Preußler
Original title	Krabat
Translator	Anthea Bell
Cover artist	Chris Kubica
Country	Germany
Language	German
Genre	Children's novel
Publisher	New York Review Books in US
Publication date	1971
Published in English	1972
ISBN	(English)

Krabat is a fantasy novel about the eponymous Sorbian folk hero, written by Otfried Preußler. The book deals primarily with black magic and the lure of evil. Other themes include friendship, love, and death. It won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis (Prize for Literature for Young People) in 1972.

The book was first published in 1971 and in a English translation first as The Satanic Mill from 1972 to 1991, then republished in 2000 as The Curse of the Darkling Mill, in 2011 as Krabat and in 2014 as Krabat and the Sorcerer's Mill.

Set in the mid 17th century, the story follows the life of Krabat, a 14-year-old Wendish (i.e. Wends) beggar boy living in the eastern part of Saxony. For three consecutive nights, he is called to a watermill near the village Schwarzkollm through a dream. Upon heeding the call and arriving at the mill, he begins his apprenticeship as a miller's man. He soon joins the secret brotherhood, composed of journeymen and apprentices, and discovers that the skill he is meant to learn through this apprenticeship is Black Magic. The first magic powers Krabat acquires are rather harmless, such as the ability to turn himself into a raven. Other peculiarities of this watermill include the lack of any outside visitors, including farmers who would have brought grain. The only visitor to the mill is one Goodman, who may be the devil, although this is never made explicit.

The senior journeyman Tonda, Krabat's best friend and older brother figure, dies, ostensibly of an accident, on New Year's Eve in Krabat's first year at the mill. Tonda offers strangely little resistance to his own death. Krabat's suspicions of foul play are further reinforced when another journeyman and friend, Michal, dies the following New Year's Eve. He soon realizes that the master is bound in a pact to the Goodman: the master must sacrifice one journeyman every year on New Year's Eve, or perish himself.