The Frog in the Throat
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- 8,99 €
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- 8,99 €
Publisher Description
A bracing and darkly comic novel about a disgraced priest who finds himself haunted by his dead and disapproving father, this little-known classic of Swiss literature is impossible to forget.
In a small town in Switzerland, Franz—ex-clergyman, ex-husband, current counselor of locals at loose ends—is being haunted by his recently deceased father, Klement. In life, Franz was caught cheating on his wife and defrocked, after which Klement never spoke to him again. In death, Klement visits his son in the form of a frog in the throat, choking him, yes, but also giving voice to an old dairy farmer devoted to the old ways, forever railing against his son and the whole modern mess he represents.
The same can be said of this novel, in which these two voices clash, harmonize, and ultimately offer up all the mutual recognition and incomprehension that is family life. A miniature tragicomic masterpiece, Markus Werner’s second novel is as bursting with life as a Dickens novel: not only Franz’s high-strung shenanigans and the father’s settled life among the cattle, but the lives of his sister and brother and the land all around.
As in all of Werner’s work, the world looks grim (“I sit around, I drink, I brood, I pat myself down for flaws and find many and each evening I say: Starting tomorrow I’m going to get a grip on myself”) but never less than comic—a view captured marvelously in Michael Hofmann’s vivid translation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This effervescent 1985 novel from Swiss author Werner (On the Edge), who died in 2016, follows a ruined middle-aged man haunted by the ghost of his father. Franz, a divorced former clergyman who was defrocked after cheating on his wife, receives frequent visits from his late father, Klement, who appears as a frog in his throat. That's about it for the plot; what drives the narrative are the men's irresistible voices, as Franz rues his past decisions ("I sit around, I drink, I brood, I pat myself down for flaws and find many") and Klement, a socialist dairy farmer, presses his religious and philosophical convictions onto his son ("You stern Franz, now you have no choice, the only possible way forward for you is to sin, and therefore it is no sin"). As each character attempts to justify his existence, Werner fashions their competing viewpoints into a wry treatise on modern masculinity. Brilliantly translated by Hofmann, who provides an illuminating introduction, this sly and strange father-son dialogue deserves to be a cult classic.
