Talking About the Weather

Columns 2012–2015

Rights sold to:

Uzbekistan (Turon-Iqbol)

Essays

General

Peter Bichsel

Talking About the Weather / Über das Wetter reden

Columns 2012–2015

Talking about the weather, about anything, that is. Being understood, even if it’s just by someone who doesn’t even speak my language. Peter Bichsel’s columns can strike up a conversation with anyone, because his high art of storytelling deals with all sorts oft hings: the seasons and the weather, sporting and political events – but always with people, with stories of strangers and friends. The narrator voices his opinions and doubts, even about his own opinion. He aims at a statement by...

»If people read his books in a hundred years, they are going to […] encounter a polyphonic composition of a thousand nameless voices from today’s Switzerland. These voices whisper, talk, make noise, whisper and hum in a muddle. Still, each of them can be heard distinctly and behind it appears a living human face.« Peter von Matt

»Reading his columns is like a conversation with an old friend.« Martin Ebel, Deutschlandfunk

»Short texts about people who marvel at this world, who are amazed, who know about their own shortcomings – this the author has mastered like hardly any other, no matter for which age group.« Martina Sulner, Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung

»Newspaper columns are a fleeting genre, they are generally forgotten as quickly as they are read; but Peter Bichsel’s texts have something unique about them.« Martin Krumbholz, SWR

»What distinguishes Bichsel’s columns […] is the precise observation of things, of how people are and how they behave. And it‘s his passion for not being satisfied with the initial, obvious findings.« Beda Hanimann, St. Galler Tagblatt

»Bichsel‘s true great novel, his secret magnum opus, are these columns ...« Beat Mazenauer and Severin Perrig

»The slender collection showcases Peter Bichsel in all his facets. As a columnist, he is always a sceptic and looks behind things with his curious child-like eyes […] The columns were and are his ›daily business‹, which has become […] our rewarding, enjoyable reading experience.« Manfred Orlick, literaturkritik.de

»Bichsel‘s columns from 2012–2015 show his view of people‘s ›suffering of life‹, his love for people.« P.S., die linke Zürcher Zeitung

2015, 150 pages

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Essays

General

Peter Bichsel

Author

Peter Bichsel was born in Lucerne in 1935. He lives in Bellach where he works as a freelance author. He has been a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts and a corresponding member of the German Academy for Language and Literature in Darmstadt since 1985. He has been awarded numerous prizes for his works.

Peter Bichsel

Author

Peter Bichsel was born in Lucerne in 1935. He lives in Bellach where he works as a freelance author. He has been a member of the Berlin Academy of...

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Year of Publication: 2023

Peter BichselYear of Publication: 2023

Beautiful Sister Boredom

»Am I allowed to get bored – in light of world events?« Peter Bichsel once asked, almost provocatively. What the author gains from boredom (in a wide variety of guises and from very different perspectives) in this new selection of short stories and reflections is thought-provoking and anything but boring; it is astonishing, amusing – and always encouraging. »The...

Something Has to Be Done About the Banana Trees in Winter

Year of Publication: 2021

Peter BichselYear of Publication: 2021

Something Has to Be Done About the Banana Trees in Winter

»›Yeees. Alllright,‹ says Peter Bichsel when you ask him: How are you? When you ask him: What are you doing for Christmas?, the answer is: ›Yeees. Christmas, right, right.‹ Both entirely superfluous questions, really. His very deliberate, simple answers, however, tell a whole story. Sometimes it takes only three lines, sometimes a single word is enough to let...

Year of Publication: 2020

Peter BichselYear of Publication: 2020

The Donkey, Too, Has a Soul

The first of Peter Bichsel‘s P.S.-columns, which have become an institution sui generis over the course of four decades, was published in Zurich’s Tages-Anzeiger in 1975. But even in the 1960s, the author had been writing numerous journalistic contributions and columns on questions of the times, that accompanied his early successes as a literary storyteller. Beat...

Year of Publication: 1999

Peter BichselYear of Publication: 1999

Cherubin Hammer and Cherubin Hammer

Peter Bichsel tells the story of Cherubin Hammer, who thinks that he is a writer and is trying, unsucessfully, to live the biography of a writer. He confronts him with a second Cherubin hammer, a...

Rights sold to:

France (Héros-Limite)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Italy (Marcos y Marcos)

You Couldn’t Take a Stand Against Our Postman

Year of Publication: 1995

Peter BichselYear of Publication: 1995

You Couldn’t Take a Stand Against Our Postman

Whether he talks about the suffering of professional footballers or about a strange journey on a train through Egypt, whether he chats about life in New York or an old postman who delivered his...

Rights sold to:

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Italy (Marcos y Marcos)

Year of Publication: 1993

Peter BichselYear of Publication: 1993

On the City of Paris

»I believe«, says Peter Bichsel, »that the importance of literature lies not in conveying content but in maintaining storytelling. Because people need stories to survive. They...

Rights sold to:

Thailand (Gamme Magie Éditions), Azerbaijan (Alatoran), Iran (Nashr-i Naw)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: French rights (Éditions d’en bas), Italy (Marcos y Marcos), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Turkey (Ayrac), India (Bengali, Tarjama Books), India (English, Tarjama Books), Israel (Babel)

Year of Publication: 1985

Peter BichselYear of Publication: 1985

The Buzzard

Buzzard is a rich, homesick native of Solothurn with whose money Solothurn’s historic city centre is »beautified« (and made unlivable). Buzzard, however, is also the name of the...

Rights sold to:

French rights (Éditions d’en bas), Italy (Casagrande)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Espasa Calpe), Norway (Damm & Søn)

Year of Publication: 1982

Peter BichselYear of Publication: 1982

The Reader. The Story

Peter Bichsel‘s five lectures from 1982 are not actually lectures but stories about lectures. They are refreshingly unpretentious and always exceedingly subtle – just as his works of fiction. At...

Rights sold to:

Turkey (Ketebe)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Italy (Comma 22), Denmark (Gyldendal), Sweden (Janus), Croatia (Naklada MD)

Year of Publication: 1969

Peter BichselYear of Publication: 1969

Children’s Stories

Seven stories in which strange old fogies, failing, preposterous rebels, descendants of the knights of the sad face dare to challenge the irreversibility of what already exists. Here is a man who...

Rights sold to:

Catalan rights (Los Cuarto), France (Attila), Finland (Otava), Korea (Wisdomhouse), Japan (Asahi), Thailand (Gamme Magie Éditions), Slovakia (Milanium), Lithuania (Pamėginčius), Turkey (Ketebe), Azerbaijan (Alatoran), Iran (Aftabkaran)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: UK (Calder & Boyars), USA (Delacorte), Spanish world rights (Santillana), Basque rights (Erein), Galician rights (Edición Obraidoro), Brazilian Portuguese rights (Atica), Portuguese rights (selection; ASA), Italy (Marcos y Marcos), Romanic rights (Uniun dals Grischs), Netherlands (Van Goor), Denmark (Gyldendal), Sweden (Norstedt & Söner), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Poland (Longin Studio), Czech Republic (Host), Hungary (Holnap), Romania (RAO), Estonia (Kirijastus Ilmamaa), Croatia (Stajer-Graf), Serbia (Draganic), Slovenia (LUD Literatura), Greece (Ekdoseis Epikuros), Macedonia (Kultura), Ukraine (Golovna Specializovana Redakcija), Belorussia (Logvinau), Georgia (Bakur Sulakauri), India (Hindi; Saar Sansaar), India (Urdu; Punjab Book Department)

Year of Publication: 1967

Peter BichselYear of Publication: 1967

The Seasons

This the story of a house, an ordinary residential house, and the people and objects in it. The author raises the inventory and he invents a character, who is called Kieninger. Kieninger rents a...

Rights sold to:

France (Gallimard), Turkey (Ketebe)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Italy (Comma 22), Netherlands (Meulenhoff), Denmark (Arena), Sweden (Norstedt), Korea (Bookstory), Poland (Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy), Czech Republic (Odeon)

And Really Frau Blum Would Very Much Like to Meet the Milkman

Year of Publication: 1964

Peter BichselYear of Publication: 1964

And Really Frau Blum Would Very Much Like to Meet the Milkman

And Really Frau Blum Would Very Much Like to Meet the Milkman today is considered a classic collection of stories in which the author managed to create something unique both for his and for...

Rights sold to:

Catalan rights (Lleonard Muntaner Editor), Thailand (Gamme Magie Éditions), Georgia (Intelekti), Iran (Aftabkaran)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: UK (Calder & Boyars), Spanish world rights (Espasa Calpe), France (Gallimard), Italy (Marcos y Marcos), Denmark (Gyldendal), Sweden (Norstedt & Söner), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Korea (Munhakdongne), Hungary (Bookart), Croatia (Mlinarec & Plavic), Slovenia (LUD Literatura), Turkey (Kabalci), Greece (Grammata), Belorussia (Logvinau)