She can't hide her light under a bushel

Anna quickly discovers that no one can see her halo except animals, who follow her adoringly, and babies, who point at her with delight. At school, she maintains her signature decorum, deeply anxious that she might be discovered and humiliated. But nothing unusual occurs until she's walking home by the river one evening and thousands of fish jump onto the shore as she passes. Her stroll is unaffected even when she's hit by a car.

Another morning she wakes up to find her houseplants have exploded into a lush Garden of Eden. Her speech is sometimes littered with quotations from the Bible.

All this might have passed unnoticed if not for the doctor, a neurologist, whom Anna consults early on. Stunned by the spontaneous healing of his arthritic knee after a brief conversation with her, he quickly surmises that Anna is the link between a rash of strange events in town. After a series of surreptitious (and ridiculous) tests, he confirms his suspicions and begins plotting with the mayor to harness her power.

Much of Bozai's acerbic satire here is directed at East European politicians who have made the transition from venal communism to exploitative capitalism with impressive ease. Desperate to increase the town's tourism industry, the mayor constructs an international healing center - a massive shell game of nested corporations funded with public money and owned by his friends and cronies.

The doctor keeps Anna involved with the new center just enough to effect healings, but not enough to let anyone know she's the real engine behind this immensely profitable empire. While she remains just as modest and punctilious as ever, a vast structure of marketing campaigns, New Age theories, legal rules, insurance regulations, and financing scams springs up to exploit her simple gift.

Perhaps most provocative is Bozai's portrayal of a medical establishment determined to dismiss the possibility of spiritual healing even while working tirelessly to harness these wonderful recoveries in an apparatus of medical routines and billing procedures. The whole enterprise depends on keeping grateful patients ignorant, intimidated, and obedient.

Unfortunately, the deliberate pacing of this book - particularly in the first half - will be a significant deterrent for American readers. Despite their potential sympathy for this critique of a healthcare system that's chronically infected with bureaucracy, marketing, and conflicts of interest, it's difficult to imagine such a cerebral satire climbing the bestseller list in the United States, as it did in Germany and Hungary.

But that's no reason not to hope for its success; sometimes, what sounds miraculous is entirely natural.

• Ron Charles is the Monitor's book editor. Send comments about the book section toRon Charles.

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