Catherine Lovey
Switzerland
Catherine Lovey was born in 1967 into a mountain farming family in Val d’Entremont, Valais. She studied international relations and criminology and worked as an economic and financial journalist.
Lovey’s writing revolves around the subtle cracks in everyday life; it is precise, poetic and imbued with quiet irony. “With great sensitivity, she finds words where they are missing,” as Le Matin Dimanche put it. Thus, in her novels and essays alike, she lays bare existential questions with great tenderness. With Die Geschichte vom Mann, der nicht sterben wollte (French: Historire de l’homme qui ne voulait pas mourir), a novel by Catherine Lovey is now finally available in German. It tells the story of a businessman who refuses to accept his terminal illness, and of his neighbour, who accompanies him. From an initial distance, an unusual closeness develops between the two. Shifting in tone between intimacy and reflective detachment, Lovey unfolds a touching approach to the inevitable. Winner of the 2025 Swiss Literature Prize, among other awards, this novel is a quiet, lingering reflection on pain and gentleness, sadness and the beauty of life and death, of the human and the interpersonal.
Geschichte vom Mann, der nicht sterben wollte. Novel. Translated from French by Walter Pfäffli. Edition Bücherlese 2026
Disponible en français:
Monsieur et Madame Rivaz. Roman. Zoé 2016
Un roman russe et drôle. Roman. Zoé 2010
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