"Fly Away, Pigeon" tells the heart-wrenching story of a family torn between emigration and immigration and paints evocative portraits of the former Yugoslavia and modern-day Switzerland.  In this novel, Melinda Nadj Abonji interweaves two narrative s...

T. , an acclaimed but ageing actor, and Efina, a passionate theatergoer, are engaged in an obsessive love affair that careens from attraction to repulsion. They compulsively write letters – often to express their intense dislike of one another – whic...

"New York... I HATE IT... I LOVE IT... I DON'T KNOW..." These are the reflections of Max Frisch (1911-1991) writing from his apartment in the Big Apple near the end of the twentieth century. Beginning in 1946 and continuing until his death at the age...

Since his first collection of poetry appeared in 1953, Philippe Jaccottet has sought to express the ineffable that lies at the heart of our material world in his essential, elemental poetry. As one of Switzerlands's most prominent and prolific men of...

The Lectures on Poetics Series at the University of Frankfurt VI has hosted many illustrious speakers at its lectern, including Ingeborg Bachmann, Theodor Adorno, and Heinrich Boll. At the beginning of 2007, Urs Widmer – described by the "Independent...

As the current global recession stubbornly persists and financial experts around the world struggle to prevent further financial collapse, everyone has a theory about how to save the economy. But perhaps no idea that has been proffered is as radical...

In this companion to Urs Widmer's novel "My Mother's Lover", the narrator is again the son who pieces together the fragments of his parents' stories. Since the age of twelve, Karl, the father, has observed the family tradition of recording his life i...

A fire broke out in the coal seams of their town years ago, and the flames are still smoldering underground. Margaret and Fritzi, the two sisters who are the heroines of "Invitation to the Bold of Heart", the debut novel by Swiss writers Dorothee Elm...

Together Max Frisch and Friedrich Durrenmatt are not only two of the most esteemed Swiss writers of the twentieth century, but arguably two of the most important European writers since World War II. The remarkable letters gathered here document their...

Annemarie Schwarzenbach – journalist, novelist, antifascist, archaeologist, and traveler – has become a European cult figure for bohemian free spirits since the rediscovery of her works in the late 1980s. "Lyric Novella" is her story of a young man's...