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 father’s farm, and Minna, who rejected him for his brother. He listens for the call of the dark goblins, who during the twelve days of Christmas, that strange space of time between Christmas and the Epiphany, commit their deeds, gazes into the ceaselessly falling white, and, marked by illness, waits...
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 father’s farm, and Minna, who rejected him for his brother. He listens for the call of the dark goblins, who during the twelve days of Christmas, that strange space of time between Christmas and the Epiphany, commit their deeds, gazes into the ceaselessly falling white, and, marked by illness, waits for his brother in order to finally have a conciliatory talk.
»There are certain texts in which everything fits – the tone, the atmosphere, the rhythm, the choice of words – and this slender book by Urs Faes is just such a text.« Charles Linsmayer, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
»Twelve Nights is an atmospherically rich, incredibly empathetic tale. ... Urs Faes’ language settles itself down like a soft, white coat across the reader’s shoulders.« Gallus Frei-Tomic, literaturblatt.ch
»A gentle, thoughtful book!« Annette König, SRF 1
»Cautious and tender, while at the same time confident and without a word too many.« Hans Ulrich Probst, SRF
»Urs Faes has accomplished a brilliant feat of poetic concentration that delights quietly.« literarischer monat
»There are certain texts in which everything fits – the tone, the atmosphere, the rhythm, the choice of words – and this slender book by Urs Faes is just such a text.« Charles Linsmayer, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
»Twelve Nights is an atmospherically rich, incredibly empathetic tale. ... Urs Faes’ language settles itself down like a soft, white coat across the reader’s shoulders.« Gallus Frei-Tomic,...
Persons
Urs Faes
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...
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Summer Shadows
On the way back to his little shack on a vineyard near the Black Forest, the narrator receives a phone call that turns his world upside down. His partner Ina has had a serious accident while freediving. She is placed in an induced coma, and nobody knows whether she has suffered brain damage, whether she will ever wake up again at all. In the days that follow, he is terrified that she won’t...
Daytimes
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...
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...
Summer in Brandenburg
Two young people, not quite twenty years old: he, a gangly boy from Hamburg, middle-class upbringing, musical; she, with the dark eyes and the easy laugh, the daughter of a Viennese newspaperman. They meet, they work together, they fall in love – under unusual circumstances.
In the summer of 1938, Lissy Harb and Ron Berend are at a...
Pairing
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Romania (Univers)
Archive of Love
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,...
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Chinese simplex rights (Alpha Books), Bulgaria (Atlantis)
Ombra
Ombra is the fictional life story of the Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca, who painted pictures like crime novels; the love story of an eccentric lecturer...
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Czech Republic (Archa), Lithuania (Alma Littera)
