Swiss literature: new publications in May 2024
Published: Tuesday, Apr 30th 2024, 11:11
Back to Live Feed
Prose, spoken word, essays and poetry by Swiss authors and writers who live in Switzerland: The Keystone-SDA news agency has selected new works that will provide food for thought in May.
Andri Beyeler: "Sang of a printer and settler". Biographical ballad. Der gesunde Menschenversand, 88 pages. (Published on May 1st)
Fritz Jordi (1885-1938) was a printer and communist. He came from the canton of Bern and, after years of traveling, settled in Ticino, where he built up a living and working community - and paid a high price for it. The dialect author Andri Beyeler dedicates a ballad to this historical figure and adds illustrations to his text. In doing so, he goes beyond the person of Jordi by addressing the search for meaning in life and the longing to realize great ideals on a small scale.
Lukas Bärfuss: "Einsiedler Welttheater. Based on the play by Don Pedro Calderón de la Barca". Rowohlt, 176 pages. (To be published on May 15)
The play by the 17th century Spanish poet has been performed on the open-air stage in front of the monastery in Einsiedeln for a hundred years. Instead of characters, allegories appear that lend the theater - as the term world theater suggests - universal appeal. It is about central questions such as what role one takes on oneself or what one is prepared to die for. After Thomas Hürlimann and Tim Krohn, Lukas Bärfuss has now written his version for the hundredth anniversary. He concentrates on the utopian core of the play. The Rowohlt paperback contains the original text in dialect as well as a High German translation and an essay by the author.
Fleur Jaeggy: "I am the brother of XX. Stories". 120 pages
- "The blissful years of chastisement". Novel. 110 pages
- The fear of the sky". Stories. 100 pages. Suhrkamp Verlag. (To be published on May 15)
The constant proximity of death, the curse of having a family, madness, loss and murder: these are the themes around which Fleur Jaeggy revolves in her stories and novels. She is described as a "poet of despair" or a "virtuoso of the spectacle" by Suhrkamp Verlag in Berlin, which has set itself the task of reissuing the Swiss author's work. Jaeggy was born in Zurich in 1940 and has lived in Milan for decades. The author, intellectual and mystic was a confidante of Ingeborg Bachmann - and once a model. She writes in Italian.
Vincent O. Carter: "Amerigo Jones". Novel. Limmat Verlag, 800 pages. (To be published on May 23)
"Amerigo Jones" is both a novel and a first-hand account of black life in America during the Jazz Age of the 1920s and 30s and against the backdrop of the approaching Second World War. From the perspective of a child, Vincent O. Carter (1924-1983) tells the autobiographical story of a childhood and youth in the black ghetto of Kansas City. Carter was stationed in France towards the end of the war and then returned to the USA. After completing his studies, he returned to Europe and lived in Bern from 1953. His Bern book "Meine weisse Stadt und ich" (2021) is about this time.
Michelle Steinbeck: "Favorita". Novel. Park Ullstein. 464 pages. (To be published on May 30)
Because her mother was killed, Fiala travels from Switzerland to Italy. To the country that her grandmother had once left and where her mother had disappeared to. Fiala traces the paths of these two women. "Favorita" is a road trip of memories and encounters: with revolutionary Amazons, fascist deserters and the ghost of a young peasant woman with her throat cut. In her novel, Michelle Steinbeck tells a story that questions identity, sexual desire and patriarchal violence. Steinbeck is a columnist for the "WOZ" and co-founder of the authors' collective "Rauf".
More:
Corinne Ammann: "about life". Novel. Edition Bücherlese, 320 pages. (To be published on May 13)
Andreas Kilcher: "Kafka's workshop. The writer at work". Non-fiction book. CH. Beck, 302 pages, with illustrations. (To be published on May 16)
Beat Grossrieder: "Das verschwundene Einer-Tram. The first case for Leander König". Crime novel. Atlantis, 256 pages. (To be published on May 23)
Douna Loup: "Running wild". Novel. Limmat Verlag, 160 pages. (To be published on May 23)
Zora del Buono: "Gotthard". Narrative. Diogenes, 160 pages. (To be published on May 29)
Donna Leon: "Trial by fire. Commissario Brunetti's thirty-third case". Diogenes, 336 pages. (To be published on May 29)
Bettina Wohlfender and Beat Mazenauer (eds.): "Verführung zur Weitsicht. New texts by female authors mentored by Ruth Schweikert". essais agités vol. 13, 260 pages. (To be published on May 31)
©Keystone/SDA
English 
German 
French 
Spanish 
Arabic