Lukas Bärfuss
Switzerland
Lukas Bärfuss, born in Thun in 1971, is a playwright, novelist and essayist. He is regarded as one of the leading voices in contemporary literature; his plays are performed worldwide and his novels have been translated into 20 languages. In 2019, he was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize for his body of work. In his political plays and novels, he reveals himself to be a keen observer and an uncomfortable, incisive commentator on our times.
Following Vaters Kiste, Lukas Bärfuss has now written ‘a short book about my mother’ – so reads the subtitle of Königin der Nacht. Bärfuss tells the story of a woman ‘without education and without prospects’, driven by an ‘insatiable desire for freedom’, for whom the child – the author – was a burden. The relationship between mother and son is marked by hardship, deprivation and emotional distance; tenderness remains rare, poverty everpresent. Bärfuss depicts all this unvarnished yet lovingly, without judgement or reproach – at least not towards the mother: for he places at the centre the question of ‘where […] personal responsibility ends and that of an entire society begins’. A moving, thought-provoking text on origins, guilt and the enduring impact of social conditions.
Die Königin der Nacht. Ein kurzes Buch über meine Mutter. Novel. Rowohlt 2026
Die Krume Brot. Novel. Rowohlt 2023
Vaters Kiste. Eine Geschichte über das Erben. Rowohlt 2022
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