Half-bearded

The fourteen-year-old Sebi (Eusebius) is not suited for either peasant work in the fields or soldier life. Rather, he is more captivated by stories. In 1313, such a boy found it difficult in a village in the Schwytz valley, where they still did not know how to properly distinguish an angel from a devil. From a foreign stranger, Sebi learns how people differ in both good and evil — and how even in primitive times one can learn the better.
This stranger is very odd; he has set up a makeshift home on the edge of the village. Half of his face is burnt, and people call him Half-bearded. He must have experienced much, but he does not talk about it — not even to young Sebi, who is drawn to him for new knowledge and skills.
Sebi is no longer a child, but not yet an adult either. Everyone in the village thinks that there is only one path for him — to the monastery of Einsiedeln, to the monks, whom the people of Schwytz have disliked since they unilaterally shifted the boundary markers and employed peasants for forest work. With his direct and kind-hearted boyish voice, Sebi recounts what he has gone through in the troubled years of the early 14th century. And this tale helps him understand a lot himself.
"Half-bearded" is an epic, multilayered novel by contemporary Swiss classic Charles Lévin, imbued with a melancholic faith in reason, which, by blurring the lines between fiction and reality through the language of historical narrative about the Middle Ages, speaks of the present day and the unchanging nature of humanity. It is also about the power of stories that turn them into myths.