Memoir

»You’ll just have to do it in my stead,« Thomas Bernhard instructs his half-brother Peter Fabjan when he senses that he doesn’t have long to live. And the brother, seven years his junior, obeys and accepts responsibility, this time for a difficult legacy – just as he has always done, ever since he was young, when his older brother needed him. To him, he was »the kind brother,« whereas Fabjan...

In precise and piercing language, Yannic Biao Federer tells of the loss of his son, of saying goodbye and care work, of parenthood and love. I See You Everywhere, Forever is a document of...

Loving at a Distance talks about the author’s experiences in the hotspots of the high-tech sector in California: the Silicon Valley and the college towns of Berkeley and Stanford. The...

Nora Hespers grows up hearing many stories about her grandfather: resistance fighter Theo Hespers, who was hunted and executed by the Nazis. Her father tells them at every possible opportunity. Over and over. So often that Nora, a teenager, eventually stops listening. Then her father abandons the family and with him, her grandfather also disappears from her life. Years later – by now...

This book deals with: unfamiliar meetings, catapults, botched graveyard gardening; with Merve Verlag, Maas Verlag, rubbish; with the man of my age, onions, hope & lotto, SO36; with rubble grey, Poland, Baudrillard, Virilio, Tangerine Dream; with regular get-togethers at the pub, proof for the existence of God, mail, Frieder Butzmann; fresh shirts, Kohlenberta and the speed of light; with...

»White with fear and sleeplessness we set out to see what was left of Marijin Dvor.« Once more they have been spared: a piece of shrapnel missed the author and his wife and hit the books instead:...

Australia and Europe, queerness and Judaism, pop culture and opera stage – in »Curtain, and Hello!«, Barrie Kosky, the celebrated opera director and expert juggler of irreconcilable contradictions, lets us partake in his extraordinary life. Born and raised in Australia, 15,000 kilometres from Europe, the birthplace of opera, he discovered his love for this artform...

In 2013, an era comes to an end in Munich. Michael Krüger, the long-time publisher of Hanser Verlag, retires from his active role in the day-to-day business operations of the publishing house. He didn’t just manage the publishing house and edit the magazine Akzente. He remains active as a poet and write, as a literary critic, editor and translator. He is omnipresent and...

Throughout her childhood and teenage years Mareike Nieberding would be picked up by her father no matter where she was, if she was drunk, or who she was with. From a party at one in the morning, at seven after a shift at the bar. Her father was her protector, her comforter, an incurable optimist. When she sits in front of him today she asks herself who this greying man with freckles...

Some diagnoses are devastating; they make people feel helpless and terrified. Patients are left questioning what is happening to them and often feel like they have to find answers for themselves.

When he is in his early fifties, doctor and journalist Hartmut Wewetzer is unexpectedly diagnosed with stomach cancer. His life is literally on a knife edge. His life, his family, his career...