Description: With tongue resolutely in cheek, saxophonist, critic, poet, and one-time enfant terrible of Swiss literature Jurg Laederach here pursues the ambition of forcing all of human existence into a single novel. In Life, space is compressed to the suffocating dimensions of a single mind, while single moments are expanded cubistically into entire landscapes. Bodies are vivisected and reassembled, and language is invaded, exploded, and reassembled. The Whole of Life sees Laederach composing a novel by taking it apart as he goes.
Brief description: Jurg Laederach was born in 1945 in Basel, where he still lives and works as a freelance writer and translator. He studied mathematics in Zurich, as well as Romance studies, English, and musicology in Basel. He has received a number of prizes and distinctions and is a corresponding member of the German Academy for Language and Literature. He was awarded the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 1997 and the Italo Svevo Award in 2005.