Thailand (Gamme Magie Éditions), Azerbaijan (Alatoran), Iran (Nashr-i Naw)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: French rights (Éditions d’en bas), Italy (Marcos y Marcos), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Turkey (Ayrac), India (Bengali, Tarjama Books), India (English, Tarjama Books), Israel (Babel)
»I believe«, says Peter Bichsel, »that the importance of literature lies not in conveying content but in maintaining storytelling. Because people need stories to survive. They need models with which they can narrate their own lives to themselves. Only a life you can tell yourself is a meaningful life.« And: »I would like to counteract history with stories.«
The world of Peter Bichsel – and therefore too the world of his stories in...
»I believe«, says Peter Bichsel, »that the importance of literature lies not in conveying content but in maintaining storytelling. Because people need stories to survive. They need models with which they can narrate their own lives to themselves. Only a life you can tell yourself is a meaningful life.« And: »I would like to counteract history with stories.«
The world of Peter Bichsel – and therefore too the world of his stories in On the City of Paris – is never certain, i.e. never defined and unambiguous, but always open and an invitation to everyone to follow both the author’s imagination as well as their own in order to search for love, hope and comfort in the richness of life. With everything that he seemingly coincidentally encounters at all hours of the day and the night, Peter Bichsel points to worlds in which there is nothing that is unfamiliar to people. And so he conceives, invents and narrates biographies that are both improbable and true at the same time: And so in Bichsel’s To the City of Paris we meet the Bleary-Eyed Guy with the magic touch as well as Albert Weisshaupt, who has an embarrassing predisposition to crying, or Erwin, who is considered a fraud by his drinking buddies, and the old Fiddler Zingg or the young woman who lives, »on the whole not at all unhappy« near Rome with her three children, her husband and no appendix. And Bichsel’s characters have a quality that makes them instantly likeable: They exude warmth, because they are all loved by their author – whether they are industrialists, footballers or simply poor devils, drunks, teetotallers, idiots or know-it-alls, children, elderly widows or Inuit in New York.
With On the City of Paris Peter Bichsel has successfully written a volume of stories that tells us readers – sometimes in shorter bursts, then again with longer wind – that it’s the small things, the minimal, the inconspicuous right in front of our eyes that, if observed closely or simply given the opportunity to speak, reveals everything about us. »The lifer, asked about how he bears or handles everything, all those years in prison, replies: You know, I always tell myself that the time I’m spending in here, I’d have to spend on the outside as well.«
The first of Peter Bichsel‘s P.S.-columns, which have become an institution sui generis over the course of four decades, was published in Zurich’s Tages-Anzeiger in 1975. But even in the 1960s, the author had been writing numerous journalistic contributions and columns on questions of the times, that accompanied his early successes as a literary storyteller. Beat...
Talking about the weather, about anything, that is. Being understood, even if it’s just by someone who doesn’t even speak my language. Peter Bichsel’s columns can strike up a conversation with...
Uzbekistan (Turon-Iqbol)
Peter Bichsel tells the story of Cherubin Hammer, who thinks that he is a writer and is trying, unsucessfully, to live the biography of a writer. He confronts him with a second Cherubin hammer, a...
France (Héros-Limite)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Italy (Marcos y Marcos)
Whether he talks about the suffering of professional footballers or about a strange journey on a train through Egypt, whether he chats about life in New York or an old postman who delivered his...
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Italy (Marcos y Marcos)
Buzzard is a rich, homesick native of Solothurn with whose money Solothurn’s historic city centre is »beautified« (and made unlivable). Buzzard, however, is also the name of the...
French rights (Éditions d’en bas), Italy (Casagrande)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Espasa Calpe), Norway (Damm & Søn)
Peter Bichsel‘s five lectures from 1982 are not actually lectures but stories about lectures. They are refreshingly unpretentious and always exceedingly subtle – just as his works of fiction. At...
Turkey (Ketebe)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Italy (Comma 22), Denmark (Gyldendal), Sweden (Janus), Croatia (Naklada MD)
Catalan rights (Los Cuarto), France (Attila), Finland (Otava), Korea (Wisdomhouse), Japan (Asahi), Thailand (Gamme Magie Éditions), Slovakia (Milanium), Lithuania (Pamėginčius), Turkey (Ketebe), Azerbaijan (Alatoran), Iran (Aftabkaran)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: UK (Calder & Boyars), USA (Delacorte), Spanish world rights (Santillana), Basque rights (Erein), Galician rights (Edición Obraidoro), Brazilian Portuguese rights (Atica), Portuguese rights (selection; ASA), Italy (Marcos y Marcos), Romanic rights (Uniun dals Grischs), Netherlands (Van Goor), Denmark (Gyldendal), Sweden (Norstedt & Söner), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Poland (Longin Studio), Czech Republic (Host), Hungary (Holnap), Romania (RAO), Estonia (Kirijastus Ilmamaa), Croatia (Stajer-Graf), Serbia (Draganic), Slovenia (LUD Literatura), Greece (Ekdoseis Epikuros), Macedonia (Kultura), Ukraine (Golovna Specializovana Redakcija), Belorussia (Logvinau), Georgia (Bakur Sulakauri), India (Hindi; Saar Sansaar), India (Urdu; Punjab Book Department)
This the story of a house, an ordinary residential house, and the people and objects in it. The author raises the inventory and he invents a character, who is called Kieninger. Kieninger rents a...
France (Gallimard), Turkey (Ketebe)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Italy (Comma 22), Netherlands (Meulenhoff), Denmark (Arena), Sweden (Norstedt), Korea (Bookstory), Poland (Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy), Czech Republic (Odeon)
Catalan rights (Lleonard Muntaner Editor), Thailand (Gamme Magie Éditions), Georgia (Intelekti), Iran (Aftabkaran)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: UK (Calder & Boyars), Spanish world rights (Espasa Calpe), France (Gallimard), Italy (Marcos y Marcos), Denmark (Gyldendal), Sweden (Norstedt & Söner), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Korea (Munhakdongne), Hungary (Bookart), Croatia (Mlinarec & Plavic), Slovenia (LUD Literatura), Turkey (Kabalci), Greece (Grammata), Belorussia (Logvinau)