Oompah Pop or How Science Made its Way to the Mountains

In this novel, Vea Kaiser tells the multigenerational story of a family living in the fictitious Austrian mountain village of St. Peter am Anger. Plagued by the suspicion that the baby his wife has given birth to was actually fathered by his rival, the woodcarver Johannes Gerlitzen can no longer stand the isolation and parochialism of St.
Peter. He follows a newfound passion for science – first awakened by an extremely long tapeworm he had during his wife’s pregnancy – to the city, where he studies medicine, and returns to the village as a doctor in time to care for his dying wife and try to fulfill his fatherly duties. When his daughter Ilse herself becomes a mother,
Dr. Gerlitzen takes his grandson under his wing.

Inspired by his grandfather’s example, Johannes A. Irrwein has a strong aversion to St. Peter’s narrow-minded traditionalism. Hungry for knowledge, he longs for the wider world. But when this model student unexpectedly fails his school-leaving exams, he redirects his intellectual energies toward his immediate surroundings. Emulating his favorite author, Herodotus, the father of historiography, he sets to work on writing the chronicles of St. Peter am Anger, and in the process he inadvertently brings about an event that will change the mountain village forever.