MASAYA

  • A vibrant, gripping novel about the epochal collapse of certainties around 1500 - mirroring our own time.
  • A literary delight set in royal courts and Central America, featuring Columbus, Da Vinci, and Machiavelli.

Central America, 1529: As an envoy of the Spanish King, Fernández de Oviedo is tasked with exploring the Masaya volcano. Is it the gateway to Hell, as the locals believe? Or the portal to all the riches of the world?

During the dangerous expedition through dense jungle and across barren heights, Oviedo reflects on his life at court: his time as a confidant of the Infante, his drawing lesson with Leonardo da Vinci, the know-it-all Columbus, or Queen Joanna, whom they called "The Mad" and who was nonetheless wiser than everyone else.

But the New World soon reveals itself to be less untouched than it seems. Oviedo encounters armed women, German butterfly hunters, suspiciously scholarly natives, and all sorts of inexplicable phenomena. In the thin mountain air, he searches for the truth - about this continent, its conquest, and about himself.

Fernández de Oviedo (1478–1557), naturalist and explorer, was the great role model for Alexander von Humboldt. Masaya recounts his illustrious life almost incidentally and unfolds the panorama of an epoch whose shaky truths are astonishingly similar to our own time.

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  • Publisher: Rowohlt Berlin
  • Release: 17.07.2026
  • ISBN: 978-3-7371-0242-1
  • 304 Pages
  • Author: Daniel Damler

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Daniel Damler MASAYA
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Daniel Damler

Daniel Damler , born in 1975, works as a lawyer, teaches at the University of Tübingen, and conducts research at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory. He is a regular contributor to the features section of the  Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . Daniel Damler lives in Frankfurt am Main. Masaya is his first novel.