Book Brahmin: Peter Stamm

Peter Stamm was born in 1963, in Weinfelden, Switzerland, and is the author of many short stories and plays. Stamm's novels Unformed Landscape, On a Day Like This and Seven Years, and the collection In Strange Gardens and Other Stories are available from Other Press. He lives outside of Zurich. His latest collection of short stories, We're Flying (translated by Michael Hofmann), was published on August 14, 2012, by Other Press.

On your nightstand now:

"Im Licht der Finsternis" by Anita Albus, an essay about Proust (whom I haven't read yet). Les petits by Frédérique Clémençon, which someone gave me at the Geneva Book Fair. And then there is this huge pile of unread books that sometimes haunt me.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Probably Jules Verne's Michael Strogoff: The Courier of the Czar. It made me instantly accept an invitation to a reading tour in Siberia almost 30 years later. I did travel much more comfortably than Strogoff, though.

Your top five authors:

Ernest Hemingway, Cesare Pavese, Robert Walser, Anton Chekhov and Joseph von Eichendorff.

Book you've faked reading:

I used to have the bad habit to nod silently and make a knowing face when people were talking about books I hadn't read. Until I realized that most people hadn't read most books. Since then I admit with pride all shortcomings.

Book you're an evangelist for:

A Man Asleep by Georges Perec. When I first read this book, it was like a religious experience. It's probably about finding a meaning in a meaningless world. It's written in the second person, a high-risk undertaking that Perec masters wonderfully. The wonderful last words: "You are afraid, you are waiting. You are waiting at the Place Clichy that the rain stops falling." (My own translation.)

Book you've bought for the cover:

I don't remember the title, but I'm sure there was a beautiful woman on the cover.

Book that changed your life:

The short stories by Ernest Hemingway. After having grown up on literature of the 19th century, I became aware that there was a new way of writing (which wasn't that new when I was reading it). I first read Hemingway at school in an English class. It blew me away.

Favorite line from a book:

Just one of many from The Seagull by Anton Chekhov: "If at any time you should have need of my life, come and take it."

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

The Stranger by Albert Camus, again a book I first read in school. We read it in French, and I probably just understood half of it, but it still made a deep impression on me.

 

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