Chinese simplex rights (Alpha Books), Bulgaria (Atlantis)
»I loved him. He was the great love of my life…«
With these words an old lady introduces herself to the author who has just arrived to attend a reading. It is November, All Saints’ Day, and even traveling to the reading through the valley of his childhood has reawakened memories in him.
And now he is confronted with this unknown woman, Anna Altmann, who claims to have been his father's lover many years ago. She hands him a photograph and her telephone number. The meeting leaves him perplexed, he does not ring back, stubbornly banishing the thought from his mind – until, one day, he receives news of the death of Anna Altmann. The letter is from her daughter Vera, asking him to pick up a few things: photos, letters, tokens of love that Anna had kept for all those years, testimonies to the love between Anna and his father; Vera calls it the "archive", the "archive of love".
He begins, initially with great reluctance and then with growing fascination, and together with Vera investigates the past and synchronizes his memories of the summer of 1954, when his father disappeared for several months, with those of Vera.
In his concise, precise, light style, Urs Faes tells of things past, of a great love preserved in small things – and of a hunt for clues that ends in an extraordinary discovery: the story of a father about whom some people had had an idea but whom nobody really knew.
Urs Faes, born in Aarau, Switzerland, in 1947, lives and works in Zurich and San Feliciano, Italy. In 2008 he was awarded the Preis der Schweizerischen Schillerstiftung.
Urs Faes, born in Aarau, Switzerland, in 1947, lives and works in Zurich and San Feliciano, Italy. In 2008 he was awarded the Preis der...
A man and a woman meet late in life and experience once again deep affection and happiness, in everyday life and on travels to the landscape of his youth – the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming. But their delights are soon joined by the infirmities of old age, Jakov becomes increasingly forgetful.
A name fails to materialise, an appointment is missed, a garbage bag is thrown into the...
After years abroad a man returns to the forlorn yet familiar valley in the Black Forest. He walks the old paths through the heavy snow, remembers the bitter inheritance dispute surrounding his...
English world rights (Harvill Secker)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Netherlands (De Bezige Bij)
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...
Romania (Univers)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Czech Republic (Archa), Lithuania (Alma Littera)