Markus Werner

Aus einer vielleicht nicht zufälligen Begegnung zweier Fremder entwickelt sich eine Parabel über das Leben, die Liebe, die Treue - und ein kriminalistisches Abenteuer, das am Pfingstsonntag ein ungeahntes Ende nimmt. -

Am Hang

Michael Hoffman

Scrounged from his notebooks and hearsay, this is the story of a schoolteacher named Konrad Zündel: a philosopher, a wanna-be writer; scattered, self-conscious, glum, anxious, unlucky, discontent . . . At the end of his rope, he decides to flee his workaday life at all costs, only to find escape always a little beyond his reach. Zündel’s Exit is a Chaplinesque comedy of disintegration, never knowing if it’s coming or going. Scrounged from his notebooks and hearsay, this is the story of a schoolteacher named Konrad Zündel: a philosopher, a wanna-be writer; scattered, self-conscious, glum, anxious, unlucky, discontent . . . At the end of his rope, he decides to flee his workaday life at all costs, only to find escape always a little beyond his reach. First his tooth falls out in the sight of other travelers, then he finds a severed finger in a restroom on a train. In fact, Zündel seems on the verge of falling to bits, as do his words, thoughts, wife, and world—will there be anything left, and anyone to hold the pieces? Zündel’s Exit is a Chaplinesque comedy of disintegration, never knowing if it’s coming or going.

Zundel's Exit

Michael Hofmann

In a small town in Switzerland, Franz—ex-clergyman, ex-husband, current counselor of locals at loose ends—is being haunted by his recently deceased father, Klement. In life, Franz was caught cheating on his wife and defrocked, after which Klement never spoke to him again. In death, Klement visits his son in the form of a frog in the throat, choking him, yes, but also giving voice to an old dairy farmer devoted to the old ways, forever railing against his son and the whole modern mess he represents.

The same can be said of this novel, in which these two voices clash, harmonize, and ultimately offer up all the mutual recognition and incomprehension that is family life. A miniature tragicomic masterpiece, Markus Werner’s second novel is as bursting with life as a Dickens novel: not only Franz’s high-strung shenanigans and the father’s settled life among the cattle, but the lives of his sister and brother and the land all around.

As in all of Werner’s work, the world looks grim (“I sit around, I drink, I brood, I pat myself down for flaws and find many and each evening I say: Starting tomorrow I’m going to get a grip on myself”) but never less than comic—a view captured marvelously in Michael Hofmann’s vivid translation.

The Frog in the Throat

Roman

Zündels Abgang

Cjundel si otiva

Die kalte Schulter

roman

Yamaçta

Tierra firme

Bis bald

A psychological drama with a masterful, pulse-quickening plot revolving around two seemingly very different men, who have more in common than they know. Thomas Clarin is a divorce lawyer whose profession has fostered a deep and abiding distrust of marriage, preferring instead to "play the field." Thomas Loos is a somber widower intensely mourning his wife's death. With Clarin's flirtatious, roving eye and Loos's complete disenchantment with the world around him, it would seem these men had nothing in common. But after a fateful meeting in a crowded Swiss restaurant, the two strike up a conversation that unearths unnerving coincidences. With brilliant ease, Werner's meticulously rendered story begins quietly at first, then grabs its reader, refusing to let go. On the Edge, widely acclaimed by reviewers as a treasure of contemporary German literature, has been published in 15 different countries, and has sold over 400,000 copies in Germany alone since its publication in 2004.

On the Edge

Moritz Wenk is an averagely unsuccessful painter, and Judith Wenk, a dental hygienist, are a close and harmonius couple. During a week in a very hot summer, in perhaps Zurich, he's found work cutting out and painting shop-window dummies for a costume rental firm. There he meets a small cast of extras: a befriended couple, Kurt and Silvia, who is having difficulties, Wenk's mother, a successful painter colleague of his (Rotzel), a little erotic confrontation with a trainee in the store, and another with an ex-model of his (Maya). It's his birthday, he gets to be 38. Cold Shoulder is a chamber novelt old with Werner's characteristic charm and spleen that will delight current Werner fans and attract new ones as well.

Markus Werner

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