Fiction. Translated from the German by Marianne Thormählen. Introduction by Judith Freeman. A HAPPY MAN AND OTHER STORIES OR/ODER DER GLÜCKLICHE UND ANDERE ERZÄHLUNGEN draws together nine small fictions by German author Axel Thormählen. Jochen, the titles story's hero, is a man content in the face of others' discontent and their foolish fear of mortality. Like Jochen, many of Thormählen's characters live in deceptively simple, but impossibly profound movements, accepting the happy limits of life. Judith Freeman asks in her introduction: though we are drained, hunted to death, and out of breath, is [Jochen] not still, are we not all, happy men? Thormählen's great achievement is that his stories move as much toward the answer as the question, but in the end leave both untouched and unrelenting. A HAPPY MAN AND OTHER STORIES is published by Les Figues Press as part of the TrenchArt Parapet series, with visual art by Danielle Adair.
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Editorial Reviews
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A delightful, unusual, highly individual book, with a gentle wisdom, sometimes disturbing or amusing or both, but always very distinctive. I enjoyed it, story by story, greatly, but the total atmosphere exceeds the sum of its parts. --Claude Rawson, author of God, Gulliver and Genocide and editor of The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, IV
A Happy Man and Other Stories delivers nine philosophical tales that are taut, poetic and ruminative. This book, in fact, serves as a literary redemption for the reflective. For those of us resigned to finding the meaning of life, these stories should become a touchstone. --Monica Carter, Skylight Books Blog
A Happy Man and Other Stories delivers nine philosophical tales that are taut, poetic and ruminative. This book, in fact, serves as a literary redemption for the reflective. For those of us resigned to finding the meaning of life, these stories should become a touchstone. --Monica Carter, Skylight Books Blog
About the Author
Axel Thormählen was born in Lower Saxony, Northern Germany, in 1945, and has lived in Sweden since 1968, dividing his time between writing and translating (from Swedish into German). He has published three novels in German: Hanky (1978), Hanna (1983), and When Wörter töten könnten ( If Words Could Kill ) (2003). His novel in Swedish, Wilhelm (1993), was published by Ellerströms, who have also brought out two collections of his short stories in Swedish. A Happy Man / Der Glückliche is his first bi-lingual German/English publication.
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