30^th Leukerbad International Literary Festival

Authors

Jonas Lüscher

Switzerland

Jonas Lüscher, born in 1976, grew up in Bern, where he trained as a teacher. This was followed by several years as a dramaturg in the Munich film industry, before Lüscher studied at the Munich School of Philosophy. He gave up his doctoral studies in favour of writing. Today he is one of the most important contemporary authors in the German-speaking world; his books have been over 20 languages and have received numerous awards. His novel Verzauberte Vorbestimmung was one of the most talked-about in the German-speaking world. Lüscher was awarded various literary prizes for it, including the Spycher: Leuk Literature Prize and a Swiss Literature Prize.
The novel is an impassioned plea to place greater trust in the power of storytelling rather than solely in science and figures. It asks what technological progress means for us and our humanity. Brilliantly told, it spans a journey from the Industrial Revolution through the trenches of the First World War and Lüscher’s bed in the COVID intensive care unit, into a dystopian future – yet then, through the technological, bureaucratic and architectural fantasies of omnipotence, a laughter full of love and the hope for the power of humanity shines through the finest of cracks.

Verzauberte Vorbestimmung. Novel. Hanser 2025
Der populistische Planet. Berichte aus einer Welt in Aufruhr. Edited by Jonas Lüscher and Michael Zichy. C.H. Beck 2021
Ins Erzählen flüchten. Poetics lecture. C.H. Beck 2020

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