Sublunar - Harald Voetmann

Alternatingly told by Brahe and his assistants—a filthy cast of characters—Sublunar is both novel and almanac. When not engaged in acts of rampant sexual deviancy, drunken debauchery, or routine spankings, these peculiar helpers and their choleric and capricious master—Brahe, having lost his nose in a duel, is considered the most illustrious noseless man of his time—take painstaking measurements that will revolutionize astronomy, all before the invention of the telescope. Meanwhile, Brahe’s hapless peers Erik Lange and Falk Gøye toil away at preposterous and doomed tasks: a commentary on the Apocalypse, and the alchemical creation of gold. And across Europe, the plague rages on… The second novel in a trilogy, Sublunar is as visceral, absurd, and tragic as its predecessor, Awake, but with a special nocturnal glow and a lunatic-edged gaze trained on the moon and the stars.