A city drowns. Reality fractures. One woman refuses to believe the lie. In a mythical Bohemian city on the brink of the modern age, Waltraud lives an unconventional life - independent, skeptical, and resistant to authority. But when she begins hearing the cries of Rübezahl, a winged old man imprisoned beneath the city, her world begins to unravel. Rübezahl claims he once cared for her as a child. Now he wants her help to escape. When she refuses, violence follows - and soon the creature is free. His vengeance takes the form of a strange and sinister rain. As it falls, the city floods with hallucinations and apathy. The population grows docile. Leaders pursue absurd solutions. Class conflict ignites. And the truth becomes impossible to separate from illusion. Waltraud alone seems immune. Guided by a half-stupefied scientist and armed with an experimental weapon, she fights to stop Rübezahl as the city collapses - and later pursues him into the mountains, where myth, journalism, and public sympathy twist the nature of justice itself. Blending dark fantasy, political satire, and philosophical inquiry, Rübezahl is a haunting novel about manipulation, mass belief, and the dangerous freedom of clear thought. An other-worldly novel with philosophical undertones, Rübezahl is presented as a fantasy, a masquerade, theatre of the absurd, perhaps even an example of literary Dadaism. Once again, M. Laszlo effortlessly conjures up surreal images and situations that might have come from Flann O'Brien or Beckett. The dreamlike quality of the prose draws the reader into a hypnotic world where nothing is quite real. - Barbara Scott Emmett, Author of the acclaimed Pink Lane Part allegory, part metaphysical adventure, a mind-bending journey in which the main character questions what is real and what is hallucination as she struggles to save a town and a small boy. - Kevin Berry, Amazon best-selling author of crime noir, contemporary, interactive and dystopian fiction M. Laszlo is the pseudonym of a reclusive author living in Bath, Ohio. According to rumor, he based the pen name on the name of the Paul Henreid character in Casablanca, Victor Laszlo. M. Laszlo has lived and worked all over the world, and he has kept exhaustive journals and idea books corresponding to each location and post. It is said that the maniacal habit began in childhood during summer vacations-when his family began renting out Robert Lowell's family home in Castine, Maine. Rumor has it he still possesses those childhood diaries and plans to release a trilogy set in the Pine Tree State. The habit continued into the 1980s when he lived in London, England (the summer of 1985.) The idea books and journals from that summer inspired his first work The Phantom Glare of Day published by the hybrid Spark Press in 2022. The habit continued into the 1990s when he lived in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem and worked as a night clerk in a Palestinian youth hostel. In recent years, he revisited that very journal/idea book and based Anastasia's Midnight Song and The Nameless Land on the characters, topics, and themes contained within the writings. At the end of the decade, M. Laszlo attended Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York and earned an M.F.A degree in poetry. During his time in New York, he kept the idea books and journals that formed the basis of his second release, On the Threshold, published by the acclaimed Australian hybrid now known as Alkira. That house released Anastasia's Midnight Song on 17 January 2025. The Nameless Land serves as a stand-alone sequel and releases on 5 December 2025. M. Laszlo's political parable, Rübezahl, has been described as Animal Farm meets Alice in Wonderland and is set to be published by Alkira in April 2026. M. Laszlo has lived and worked in New York City, East Jerusalem, and several other cities around the world. While living in the Middle East, he worked for Harvard University's Semitic Museum. He holds a bachelor's degree in English from Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio and an M.F.A. in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York.