Title: Blitzeis / In Fremden Gärten
First published: 2006
Description: With the precision of a surgeon, Peter Stamm cuts to the heart of the fragile and  revealing moments of everyday life. They are bankers, students, mothers, or retirees.  They live in New York City or somewhere in Switzerland, they work in London or Riga,  they cross paths in a Fado bar in Lisbon. They breathe the banal routine of daily  life. It is to these ordinary people that Peter Stamm grants center stage in his  latest collection of short stories. Henry, a cowherd turned stuntman, crisscrosses  the country, dreaming of meeting a woman. Inger, the Dane, refuses her skimpy life  and takes off for Italy. Regina, so lonely in her big house since her children left  and her husband passed away, discovers the world anew thanks to the Australian friend  of her granddaughter, who helps Regina envision her next voyage. In these stories,  Stamm's clean style expresses despair without flash, through softness and small gestures,  with disarming retorts full of derision and infinite tenderness. There, where life  hesitates, ready to tip over--with nothing yet played out--is where these people and  their stories exist. For us, they all become exceptional. Praise for Unformed Landscape:  "Sensitive and unnerving. . . . An uncommonly intimate work, one that will remind  the reader of his or her own lived experience with a greater intensity than many  of the books that are published right here at home." --The New Republic OnlineFrom the Hardcover edition.
Subjects: Translations into English, Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, short stories (single author)
People: Peter Stamm (1963-)
LC classification: PT