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Peter Stamm

Biography

Peter Stamm

Peter Stamm is the author of the novels THE SWEET INDIFFERENCE OF THE WORLD, TO THE BACK OF BEYOND, ALL DAYS ARE NIGHT, SEVEN YEARS, ON A DAY LIKE THIS, UNFORMED LANDSCAPE and AGNES, and the short-story collections IT'S GETTING DARK, WE'RE FLYING and IN STRANGE GARDENS. His award-winning books have been translated into more than 30 languages. For his entire body of work and his accomplishments in fiction, he was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013, and in 2014 he won the prestigious Friedrich Hölderlin Prize. He lives in Switzerland.

Peter Stamm

Books by Peter Stamm

written by Peter Stamm, translated by Michael Hofmann - Fiction, Short Stories

Snowed in at a remote artists’ residency in Vermont, Peter recalls another Christmas some 30 years earlier, when he met Marcia by chance. Only now does he begin to see the consequences of their brief affair through a series of connections. When Hubert asks Sabrina to model for a sculpture, she’s flattered. But facing the finished product disturbs her, and she becomes determined to follow her double after it’s sold to a collector. Uneasy in his own skin, David decides to rob a bank. He’s heard that bank robbers often study the scene for weeks before they strike. So he’s started to lurk. In these powerfully affecting stories, Peter Stamm illustrates how fragile our reality really is, how susceptible to tricks of the heart and mind.

written by Peter Stamm, translated by Michael Hofmann - Fiction

In Stockholm's Woodland Cemetery, Christoph tells Lena 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?

written by Peter Stamm, translated by Michael Hofmann - Fiction

"Write a story about me," Agnes said to her lover, "so I know what you think of me." So he started to write the story of everything that had happened to them from the moment they met. At first, he works with Agnes to create a narrative that is most true to life, but as time passes and he grows more enamored with the narrative he has begun, he continues writing on his own, imagining a future for them after he reaches the present. Happy couples do not necessarily make for compelling reading, and as Agnes sees the unexpected plot he has planned for her, the line between fiction and reality begins to blur.

written by Peter Stamm, translated by Michael Hofmann - Fiction

Gillian is content with her marriage to Matthias, even if she feels restless at times. One night following an argument, the couple has a terrible car accident: Matthias, who is drunk, dies in the crash. Gillian wakes up in the hospital completely disfigured. Only slowly, after many twists and turns, does she put her life back together and reconnects with a love interest of the past who becomes a possible future --- or so it seems.