A nameless narrator lives alone in her abandoned parental home in a small town on the mountain, from which she is actually always drawn away. One day she takes in a guest for whom she develops an ever-increasing fascination – an inscrutable relationship between power games, attraction and mutual manipulation begins. In the process, not only the relationship between the two house inhabitants is constantly changing, but also the shape and character of the stranger, who increasingly becomes the projection surface of his hostess. Who or what the lodger is, one can hardly grasp, sometimes “brush fingers” are described, sometimes animal, sometimes human form. The atmospherically abysmal text, full of innuendo and occasionally absurd humor, was highly praised by critics. “One does this grandiose debut no harm by putting it in relation to the fixed greatness of Kafka, for this novel is not diminished by that. On the contrary.” (“Neue Zürcher Zeitung”)
For her novel, published by Suhrkamp, the author, who was born in Basel in 1988, was awarded one of the Swiss Literature Prizes 2022 as well as the “aspekte” literature prize by ZDF. Among other things, Ariane Koch studied visual arts and writes theater and performance texts that have been performed many times.
