Ariane Koch
Switzerland
Ariane Koch was born in Basel in 1988 and studied fine arts and interdisciplinarity in Basel and Bern. Her theater and performance texts, radio plays, and prose have won many awards. For her first novel
Her novel centers on a young woman who is eking out a living in a house that is too big in a town that is too small next to a triangular mountain. When a guest turns up, she takes him in without hesitation. Hospitality as a prominent theme in philosophy and literature unfolds in all its ambivalence along with the novel. The guest is as promisingly new as he is strange and he quickly becomes the captivating center of attention but also the victim of inquisitorial fantasies of power. Finally, he escapes the clutches of the increasingly obsessive landlady and she herself, alone again, embarks on a long-awaited journey, becoming a guest in her turn. Alexander Wasner, literary critic for SWR 2, was reminded of Franz Kafka when reading this novel, “because Ariane Koch’s writing shifts so wonderfully, because she follows the logic of dreams that operates in a humorous yet serious fashion, carefully and with a penchant for meanness.”
28th Leukerbad International Literary Festival:
