Zundel's Exit
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€16.99
Scrounged from his notebooks and hearsay, this is the story of a schoolteacher named Konrad Z?ndel: a philosopher, a wanna-be writer; scattered, self-conscious, glum, anxious, unlucky, discontent... At the end of his rope, he decides to flee his workaday life at all costs, only to find escape always a little beyond his reach. First his tooth falls out in the sight of other travelers, then he finds a severed finger in a restroom on a train. In fact, Z?ndel seems on the verge of falling to bits, as do his words, thoughts, wife, and world--will there be anything left, and anyone to hold the pieces? "Z?ndel's Exit" is a Chaplinesque comedy of disintegration, never knowing if it's coming or going.
Markus Werner was born in 1944 in Eschlikon, canton of Thurgau, Switzerland. Having written his dissertation on Max Frisch, Werner worked as a teacher in Schaffhausen before becoming a full-time writer in 1990. He is the author of seven novels, including On the Edge (2004), and has won numerous prizes. Michael Hofmann is an award-winning poet, critic, and translator from German. Among his translations are works by Thomas Bernhard, Ernst Junger, Franz Kafka, Wolfgang Koeppen, Joseph Roth, and his father, Gert Hofmann.