The latest addition to my website is Erhard von Büren‘s Abdankung. Ein Bericht (Epitaph for a Working Man). Von Büren wrote this, his first novel, when he was nearly fifty. It is the affectionate portrait of an ordinary, hard-working Swiss stonemason, in the last year of his life. Alois Haller has worked all his life. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz‘s Farinet ou la fausse monnaie [Farinet or the Forged Money]. Maurice Farinet, when young, befriended an old man, Sage, who had found a vein of gold in the mountains. When he died, it became Farinet’s. He uses the gold to make twenty franc coins. Given that … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz‘s Derborence (When the Mountain Fell). This novel is based on an actual historical event. In 1714 a large part of the Diabelerets mountain in Switzerland sheered off and fell on the village of Derborence. Twenty people and numerous animals were killed. There was a further fall … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz‘s La Grande Peur dans la montagne (Terror on the Mountain). This is a first-class 1920s Swiss novel, which has been translated into English though is sadly long since out of print in English. It tells the story of a small Alpine community. There is some wonderful … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Gertrud Leutenegger‘s Panischer Frühling [Panic Spring]. This book was nominated for both the Swiss Book Prize (link in German) (winner announced 9 November) and the German Book Prize for which the winner has already been announced – Lutz Seiler’s Kruso, which I reviewed last week. It is something … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Joël Dicker‘s La Vérité sur l’affaire Harry Quebert (The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair). I hesitated about reading this novel as, though it got some good reviews and won the Goncourt Prix des lycéens, it also got some poor reviews. Some reviewers thought it brilliantly combined the … Read more