27^th Leukerbad International Literary Festival

Authors

Arno Camenisch

Switzerland

Born in Tavanasa in the Canton Graubünden in 1979, Arno Camenisch grew up speaking three languages. He became a teacher and taught for several years. He then studied at the Swiss Literary Institute in Biel, where he now lives. Camenisch writes novels, radio plays, and theater plays, which have been translated into more than twenty languages. With his first twelve books, written in an idiosyncratic style that incorporates the languages of his home region and his unmistakable performances of texts that are colored with dialect, he has won over readers and critics and has been numerous prizes, including the Swiss Literature Prize. With wit, but also with melancholy and affection, Camenisch recounts the stories of droll survival artists, lonely regulars at the local tavern, and village life.

In his most recent novel Die Welt (The World), a kind of ‘emancipation tale’, Camenisch recounts in a first-person narrative how he set off into the wide world, leaving all security behind, to plunge into uncertainty on a journey to New York via Hong Kong, Paris, and Buenos Aries. In the naughts the world was in flux, Moby and the Rolling Stones provided the soundtrack, days became nights, and places and people changed.

Camenisch not only discovers new worlds in this book, but also a completely new and unexpected tone that lends a new glow to his narrative art and his stylistic intonations.

Die Welt. Roman. Diogenes 2022
Der Schatten über dem Dorf. Roman. Engeler 2021
Herr Anselm. Roman. Engeler 2019
Der letzte Schnee. Roman. Engeler 2018

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