Zündel's Exit - (Dalkey Essentials) by Markus Werner (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Konrad Zündel is a man at the end of his rope in Markus Werner's cult-hit first novel.

Zündel's Exit is a dark comedy of psychological disintegration, scrounged from notebooks and hearsay. These fragments tell the story of Konrad Zündel: schoolteacher, philosopher, wanna-be writer--scattered, self-conscious, anxious, unlucky, discontent. One summer, he decides to flee his workaday life at all costs, only to find escape always a little beyond his reach. He makes it as far as Italy when he sees a child vomit in a department store, loses his front-tooth on a ferry, then finds a severed finger in a restroom before retreating to his home in Switzerland. Zündel himself seems on the verge of falling to bits, as his marriage, career, thoughts, and words collapse around him. Will there be anything left, or anyone to hold the pieces?

About the Author

Markus Werner was a German-speaking Swiss author. He was the author of seven novels, including Zündels Abgang (Zündel's Exit), Am Hang (On the Edge), and Die kalte Schulter (Cold Shoulder). Born in 1944 in Eschlikon, in northeast Switzerland, he entered the University of Zürich in 1965, where he studied German, philosophy and psychology. In 1974, Werner completed a doctorate on Max Frisch, whose writing was to be an important influence upon Werner's own. Werner then began work as a teacher and an assistant professor at a high school in Schaffhausen, but eventually dedicated himself exclusively to writing, and lived and wrote in Schaffhausen for the remainder of his life. He has received numerous German-language awards, including the Hermann-Hesse-Literaturpreis, the Joseph Breitbach Prize, the Bodensee Literature Prize, and others.

Michael Hofmann is a German-born poet and critic and the translator of many German books. He taught for a number of years at the University of Florida.