Among The Bieresch

About the Book

About the Book Young Hans arrives with one suitcase in a squalid village on the eastern edge of empireaEUR"a surreal postwar Austria. His uncle has died and according to the tradition required by his peopleaEUR"the BiereschaEUR"Hans must assume his uncleaEUR(TM)s place for one year. In a series of interactions with the villageaEUR(TM)s tragicomic characters and their contradictory stories and scriptures, the reluctant Hans must face a world both familiar and alien.Among the Bieresch is HansaEUR(TM)s storyaEUR"one of bizarre customs, tangled relationships and the struggle between two mystical sects. The novel, translated by Isabel Fargo Cole, is a German cult favorite and a masterwork of culture shock fiction that revels in exploring oppressive cultural baggage and assimilation. Readers will encounter here an amalgam drawing from Kafka, Borges and Beckett, among others, combining to make Klaus HofferaEUR(TM)s novel a world utterly its own.aEURoeOne of the few works that will loom from the dust of this century one day.aEUR?aEUR"Urs Widmer. About the Author Klaus Hoffer lives in Graz, where he has born in 1942. He has also published essay and story collections and examinations of KafkaaEUR(TM)s work. He taught German literature in Austria, Senegal and the USA and was writer in residence at Grinnell College and Washington University, St. Louis. He is a prominent translator of such authors as Kurt Vonnegut, Nadine Gorimer, Raymond Carver, Joseph Conrad and Lydia Davis.