Request Stop

Request Stop is Urs Faes' most intimate book to date, which grew out of his personal experience of sickness and was written so as to be able to hold on to a pen, to words, to images and to memory. Writing as self-defence against one’s own frailty – and in so doing, coming face to face with life.

Immediately after diagnosis, he is speechless. It is only later, on his daily trips across the city, that he attempts to name things, to write down what it is that he experiences: the underworld that is oncology, post-radiation fatigue, memories of childhood and of home, of long-ago tram rides with his father and trips to the movies with his young girlfriend Mile, memories of being left in Paris and the departure of his loved ones. Confronted with his own death, he begins to ask himself what was lived and what was wasted, what was compulsion, what was desire and what was love.

»In Urs Faes's prose, love glows with a darkness and melancholy reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Márquez.« Der Spiegel

»a book, as unpretentious as it is powerful, that makes an attempt at taking stock of a life.« Thomas Ribi, NZZ

»This [book] is an instance in which an author at the height of his prowess, compelled to take a pause, uses the moment to present the themes and protagonists of his oeuvre anew, as in a polyphonic coda, and to introduce, faced with the uncertainty of the situation, a final inventory.« Charles Linsmayer, NZZ am Sonntag

»Urs Faes is a master of melancholy pauses, quiet notes.« Schweizer Illustrierte