Hide and Seek

The year is 1994. In a village in Carinthia, in the far-flung south of Austria at the foot of the Karawank Mountains, the narrator is holed up underneath a truck, looking out on the world and the people that inhabit it – from the knees down. She’s 11 years old and in the middle of a game of hide and seek with her friend from Bosnia, Luca. For the very last time, because her family is about to move. Their house has grown too small for her upwardly mobile mother, who is desperate to join the ranks of the middle class.

One by one, neighbours from the village arrive to help with the move, and our pint-sized narrator begins to tell her story from her hiding place. She tells of her fear of being drowned in the Katzlteich because her hair is too short. Because she wears boy’s jeans. Because she’s secretly in love with Luca. But she’s not the only one with something to hide. She knows plenty of stories about the visitors that are arriving, some that will make your blood curdle, and others that will melt your heart.

In her debut novel, Julia Jost depicts the experience of growing up in an archaic mountain world, nestled between the local pub and the confessional box – and explains how to survive there as an unconventional child by resisting the social constraints that are thrust upon her. Helped along by a tender friendship and a wild, exuberant gift for storytelling that makes reality seem better than it really is.

»If you want to have a bucket of ice-cold water dumped on your head and have to walk home sopping wet, then you’re in the right place. This light-hearted malevolence might just lead to a better world, or maybe just to the next pub. You can try out both.« Elfriede Jelinek

»A coming-of-age story with elements of a saga. An unprecedentedly bolshy tone, virtuosic.« Hildegard Keller

»Julia Jost's novel is linguistically brilliant, unimpeachable in its truthfulness, and a literary sensation.« Annemarie Stoltenberg, NDR Kultur

»[Jost’s debut] takes readers on a journey through time into the toxic political climate of Carinthia in the 1990s, where between the absurdity of rural life and the intrusion of modernity, between Nazi nostalgia and nouveau-riche entrepreneurialism, we see the rise of what would later become known as right-wing populism, a phenomenon that has cast a long shadow not just in Austria.« Uwe Mattheiß, wochentaz

»... dense, lively, and dazzling.« Michael Wurmitzer, Der Standard

»Julia Jost … has delivered a more than respectable debut in the roiling contemporary triangle between queerness, right-wing populism, and post-boomer literature.« Iris Radisch, Die Zeit

»[Jost's] sound, the way she rattles through the biographies of the villagers, is breathtaking.« Tanja Rest, Süddeutsche Zeitung

»With her debut, Julia Jost has managed to find a language for the search for identity of a pubescent child and the critique of a dishonest society, all packed in a turbulent, burlesque, and sculptural story. The story of a difficult journey of self-discovery without a hint of moralism.« Pia Reinacher, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»[Hide and Seek] tells a family story so acutely and with such detail that you can’t escape the feeling that there are elements behind the story that are largely drawn from experience.« Paul Jandl, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

»A book with a puzzling pull that demands a lot from the reader – and delivers even more than that in enjoyment.« Undine Fuchs, Deutschlandfunk Büchermarkt