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Switzerland’s diverse literature

As a country with four national languages, Switzerland is home to a diverse array of literature. For a good number of years, the “Swiss Review” has been showcasing the outstanding, stunning, unique works of Swiss authors both famous and forgotten. Literary scholar Charles Linsmayer covers this wide spectrum of excellence in his regular column. Our team of literary reviewers complements his articles with notes on recent publications.

The “Swiss Review” editorial team is responsible for all content. Contact email

Patrick Chappatte | A look back at Covid-19, in snapshots

Books

Alfred A. Häsler | “Window into a more civilised world”

Literature series

Lukas Hartmann | Shadow dance

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Jules Spinatsch | Davos, a town to rent

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Nicolas Bouvier | To Japan and Afghanistan in a Topolino

Literature series

Kurt Marti | Late poems on love and death

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Bernese theologian and author Kurt Marti died in 2017 at the ripe age of 96. He would have been 100 this year.

Ernst Frey | Across America like Chaplin’s tramp

Literature series

Swiss popular writer Ernst Frey travelled across the United States on foot as a callow 15-year-old

Cilette Ofaire | Longing for freedom

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Luisa Famos | Honduras and Venezuela in Romansh

Literature series

Luisa Famos’s poignant, inspiring works evoke memories of her Engadine homeland as well as her encounters in Latin America

Geneva in another light

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Voting day

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“It was going to be the best possible day. Vreni didn’t care about the fog that had been smothering the farm since Friday...”.

The woman who put Napoleon in his place

Literature series

Germaine de Staël, of Genevan origin, was a woman of letters and a leading intellectual who lived in Paris but had to flee to exile in Switzerland…

La pozza del Felice (Felice’s pool)

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The Swiss with an irrepressible Nordic spirit

Literature series

Three fathers – how did that happen?

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The literary stimulus of riding a bicycle

Literature series

Hunkeler in the wild

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The Swiss-Spanish wordsmith

Literature series

Joseph Jung | From dilapidated to progressive

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Switzerland was quite a precarious, dangerous, volatile, backward place in the first half of the 19th century. The country was in the mire and sinking…

Heinrich Herm | His friends called him “Devil of the sea”

Literature series

Sibylle Berg | Is this life?

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Kurt Mettler | A keen observer of late-1920s America

Literature series

Éric Burnand & Fanny Vaucher | 20th century Switzerland, revisited in a comic

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Gertrud Wilker | She found her voice in German in America.

Literature series

A plurality of origins

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Social change is breeding a new form of “home literature”, with Switzerland having long metamorphosed from a country of emigrants into a country of…

Simone Meier | A fateful kiss

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Albert Bächtold | The Klettgau Russian

Literature series

Anna Stern | Ava and Paul

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Heinrich Anacker | “Powerful songs that reflect our desires”

Literature series

Urs Altermatt | Helvetia’s unofficial royals – a lexicon

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For 171 years, the Swiss government has been in office without a single day’s interruption. The whole government is never replaced at once, it is…

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