CANCELLED
Our book club which is open and free to all literature friends will discuss (in German) the novel 'The Sweet Indifference of the World' (Die sanfte Gleichgültigkeit der Welt) by Peter Stamm. Books are available to buy from the library beforehand.
In this alluring, melancholic novel - translated by Michael Hoffmann - Peter Stamm at his best, a writer haunted by his double blurs the line between past and present, fiction and reality, in his attempt to outrun the unknown.
“Please come to Skogskyrkogården tomorrow at 2. I have a story I want to tell you.” Lena agrees to Christoph’s out-of-the-blue request, though the two have never met. In Stockholm’s Woodland Cemetery, he tells her his story, which is also somehow hers. Twenty years before, he loved a woman named Magdalena—an actress like Lena, with her looks, her personality, her past. Their breakup inspired him to write his first novel, about the time they were together, and in its scenes Lena recognizes the uncanny, intimate details of her own relationship with an aspiring writer, Chris.
Is it possible that she and Chris are living the same lives as Magdalena and Christoph two decades apart? Are they headed towards the same scripted separation? Or, in the fever of writing, has Christoph lost track of what is real and what is imagined?
In this subtle, kaleidoscopic tale, Peter Stamm exposes a fundamental human yearning: to beat life’s mysteries by forcing answers on questions that have yet to be fully asked.
Peter Stamm is the author of the novels Seven Years, On a Day Like This, and Unformed Landscape, and the short-story collections We’re Flying and In Strange Gardens and Other Stories. His prize-winning books have been translated into more than thirty languages. For his entire body of work and his accomplishments in fiction, he was short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013, and in 2014 he won the prestigious Friedrich Hölderlin Prize. He lives in Switzerland.
Source (translated text): Other Press
Participation is free of charge. You can register via
Eventbrite, but it is not essential to do so.
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