Victoria has just recently moved from Zurich back to her hometown of Bucharest when the bank where she works is robbed. Put on leave so that she can process the trauma of the robbery, Victoria strolls
In these times of heartbreaking violence, clashing religions, and a seemingly never-ending narrative of dichotomy between East and West, wonder at the religion and culture of the Middle East can be in
Somewhere deep in the European forest they meet. Frontier workers, smugglers, refugees, workers, asylum seekers, inspectors, artists, musicians, actors, journalists, scholarship holders, logisticians,
The year is 323 bce. King Alexander of Macedonia—Alexander the Great—lies paralyzed by poison in his palace in Babylon. He is thirty-two years old, had Aristotle as a mentor, and is the gr
In this companion to Urs Widmer’s novel My Mother’s Lover, the narrator is again the son who pieces together the fragments of his parents’ stories. Since the age of twelve,
It’s Switzerland in the 1920s when the two lovers first meet. She is young, beautiful, and rich. In contrast, he can barely support himself and is interested only in music. By the end of th
Max Frisch (1911–91) was a giant of twentieth-century German literature. When Frisch moved into a new apartment in Berlin’s Sarrazinstrasse, he began keeping a journal, which he came to call the Berli
Since his first collection of poetry appeared in 1953, Philippe Jaccottet has sought to express the ineffable that lies at the heart of our material world in his essential, elemental poetry. As one of
Klaus Merz is one of the most prominent, prolific, and versatile Swiss writers working today. Celebrated as a master of concise, condensed sentences, Merz brings depth and resonance to spare narrative
Swiss novelist Catherine Colomb is known as one of the most unusual and inventive francophone novelists of the twentieth century. Fascinated by the processes of memory and consciousness, her work has
One of the central figures from a remarkable generation of French-language poets, Pierre Chappuis has thus far only been represented in English translation in fragments: a few poems here and there in
The day is Friday, May 22, 2032. On this day, the day after his ninety-fourth birthday, a man is sitting in a beautiful garden. It is a paradise where he often played during his childhood, and it is h
Abandoned by his wife and young daughter, without work or prospects and blind in one eye, the narrator of Privy Portrait moves into a minuscule apartment with his only inheritance?a 25-volume encyclop
T., an acclaimed but ageing actor, and Efina, a passionate theatergoer, are engaged in an obsessive love affair that careens from attraction to repulsion. They compulsively write letters?often to expr
Rainer Brambach, one of the most widely appreciated Swiss poets in the 1950s and 60s, stood his ground outside of all fashion. Marked by his disregard for material values, a profound engagement with t
?My father bought me from the council for 365 francs,” recalls the narrator in Monica Cantieni’s novel The Encyclopaedia of Good Reasons. She’s a young girl, an immigrant to Switzerland whose adoption
Since his first collection of poetry appeared in 1953, Philippe Jaccottet has sought to express the ineffable that lies at the heart of our material world in his essential, elemental poetry. As one of
Together Max Frisch and Friedrich Durrenmatt are not only two of the most esteemed Swiss writers of the twentieth century, but arguably two of the most important European writers since World War II. T
“New York . . . I HATE IT. . . I LOVE IT. . . I DON’T KNOW. . .” These are the reflections of Max Frisch (1911–91) writing from his apartment in the Big Apple near the end of the twentieth century. Be
Kuno, a male nurse in a Swiss retirement home, has a new inmate: his father. In the confines of their new home, the pair does something surprising—they finally begin to talk. Kuno had always regarded
After several years abroad, a young man returns to his hometown to seek the man he calls master. This master, a brilliant philosopher, had made the young man into a disciple before sending him out int
In the wildly entertaining novel The Blue Soda Siphon, the narrator unexpectedly finds himself back in the world of his childhood: Switzerland in the 1940s. He returns to his childhood home to find hi
