Peter Stamm's best-selling debut novel, Agnes, now available for the first time in paperback. “Write a story about me,” Agnes said to her lover, “so I know what you think of me.” So he started to write the story of everything that had happened to them from the moment they met. At first, he works with Agnes to create a narrative that is most true to life, but as time passes and he grows more enamored with the narrative he has begun, he continues writing on his own, imagining a future for them after he reaches the present. Happy couples do not necessarily make for compelling reading, and as Agnes sees the unexpected plot he has planned for her, the line between fiction and reality begins to blur. In this unforgettable and haunting novel Stamm incisively examines the power of storytelling to influence thought and behavior, reaching a chilling conclusion.

Agnes: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Stamm, Peter

Literary

Other Press

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 Online

In Strange Gardens and Other Stories

United States

On A Day Like This: A Novel

A new novel of artful understatement about mortality, estrangement, and the absurdity of life from the acclaimed author of Unformed Landscape and In Strange Gardens On a day like any other, Andreas changes his life. When a routine doctor’s visit leads to an unexpected prognosis, a great yearning takes hold of him—but who can tell if it is homesickness or wanderlust? Andreas leaves everything behind, sells his Paris apartment; cuts off all social ties; quits his teaching job; and waves goodbye to his days spent idly sitting in cafes—to look for a woman he once loved, half a lifetime ago. The monotony of days has been keeping him in check; now he hopes for a miracle and for a new beginning. Andreas’ travels lead him back to the province of his youth, back to his hometown in Switzerland where he returns to familiar streets, where his brother still lives in their childhood home, and where Fabienne, a woman he was obsessed with in his youth, visits the same lake they once swam in together. Andreas, still consumed with longing for his lost love and blinded by the uncertainty of his future, is tormented by the question of what might have been if things had happened differently. Peter Stamm has been praised as a “stylistic ascetic” and his prose as “distinguished by lapidary expression, telegraphic terseness, and finely tuned sensitivity” (Bookforum). In On a Day Like This, Stamm’s unobtrusive observational style allows us to journey with our antihero through his crises of banality, of living in his empty world, and the realization that life is finite—that one must live it, as long as that is possible. 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 Online “If Albert Camus had lived in an age when people in remote Norwegian fishing villages had e-mail, he might have written a novel like this.”—The New Yorker “Unformed Landscape has a refreshing purity, a lack of delusion, a lack of hype.”—Los Angeles Times

On a Day Like This: A Novel

Peter Stamm's best-selling debut novel, Agnes, now available for the first time in the United States. "Write a story about me," Agnes said to her lover, "so I know what you think of me." So he started to write the story of everything that had happened to them from the moment they met. At first, he works with Agnes to create a narrative that is most true to life, but as time passes and he grows more enamored with the narrative he has begun, he continues writing on his own, imagining a future for them after he reaches the present. Happy couples do not necessarily make for compelling reading, and as Agnes sees the unexpected plot he has planned for her, the line between fiction and reality begins to blur. In this unforgettable and haunting novel Stamm incisively examines the power of storytelling to influence thought and behavior, reaching a chilling conclusion.

Man Booker Prize nominee Peter Stamm explores in his sixth novel what it means to be in the middle of nowhere, in mind and in body. Happily married with two children and a comfortable home in a Swiss town, Thomas and Astrid enjoy a glass of wine in their garden on a night like any other. Called back to the house by their son's cries, Astrid goes inside, expecting her husband to join her in a bit. But Thomas gets up and, after a brief moment of hesitation, opens the gate and walks out. No longer bound by the ties of his everyday life--family, friends, work--Thomas begins a winding trek across the countryside, exposed as never before to the Alpine winter. At home, Astrid wonders where he's gone, when he'll come back, whether he's still alive. Following Thomas and Astrid on their separate paths, To the Back of Beyond becomes ultimately a meditation on the limits of freedom and on the craving to be wanted.

To the Back of Beyond: A Novel

Peter Stamm, short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize, breaks new ground in this haunting novel about survival, self-reliance, and art, available for the first time in paperback. All Days Are Night is the story of Gillian, a successful and beautiful woman. Married and working a dream job in television as a presenter and cultural correspondent after years of drama school, Gillian has her life entirely under control, until the night a car crash irrevocably shatters her world. Her husband is killed and her once-beautiful face is disfigured. Forced to confront an existence without the face she's known for, she must put her life back together and somehow turn her tragedy into a story of new beginnings. In spare and unadorned prose, Stamm examines beauty, pain, love, and reawakening--life in its rawest form--with honesty and empathy.

All Days Are Night: A Novel

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE SEASON BY VOGUE In this alluring, melancholic novel—Peter Stamm at his best—a writer haunted by his double blurs the line between past and present, fiction and reality, in his attempt to outrun the unknown. “Please come to Skogskyrkogården tomorrow at 2. I have a story I want to tell you.” Lena agrees to Christoph's out-of-the-blue request, though the two have never met. In Stockholm's Woodland Cemetery, he tells her his story, which is also somehow hers. Twenty years before, he loved a woman named Magdalena—an actress like Lena, with her looks, her personality, her past. Their breakup inspired him to write his first novel, about the time they were together, and in its scenes Lena recognizes the uncanny, intimate details of her own relationship with an aspiring writer, Chris. Is it possible that she and Chris are living the same lives as Magdalena and Christoph two decades apart? Are they headed towards the same scripted separation? Or, in the fever of writing, has Christoph lost track of what is real and what is imagined? In this subtle, kaleidoscopic tale, Peter Stamm exposes a fundamental human yearning: to beat life's mysteries by forcing answers on questions that have yet to be fully asked.

The Sweet Indifference of the World: A Novel

A new story collection from "one of Europe's most exciting writers" (New York Times Book Review) deftly evokes and explores the shifts that occur when the world grows dark. Snowed in at a remote artists' residency in Vermont, Peter recalls another Christmas some thirty years earlier, when he met Marcia by chance on a trip to New York City. Only now, in this eerie, isolated place, does he begin to see the consequences of their brief affair through a series of connections. When Hubert asks Sabrina to model for a sculpture, she's flattered and happy to help. But facing the finished product, looking at herself from previously hidden angles, disturbs her, and she becomes determined to follow her double after it's sold to a collector. Uneasy in his own skin and with the humdrum life set out for him, David decides to rob a bank. He already has a mask for the purpose, but won't be using it today. He's heard that bank robbers often study the scene for weeks before they strike. So he's started to lurk. We think we know our world, but then the familiar suddenly turns strange, and even frightening. In these powerfully affecting, minutely constructed stories, Peter Stamm illustrates how fragile our reality really is, how susceptible to tricks of the heart and mind.

It's Getting Dark: Stories

Given a second chance with an old love, a coolly detached archivist questions the life he could have had, and whether it's not too late to live it. A poignant, ingeniously constructed new novel from "one of Europe's most exciting writers" (New York Times Book Review). Forty years ago--almost a lifetime--he confessed his love to a classmate and close friend, Franziska. Now, living in his late mother's house with the obsolete archive of the newspaper he once worked for, he looks back on days spent poring over files and clippings, increasingly withdrawn from the world. His occasional relationships never amounted to anything, and the memory of Franziska--who became pop singer Fabienne--continues to haunt him as she appears in the media. When the two cross paths again, the possibility of a different life feels achingly real. But should he risk the comfort of his ordered existence for a romance that might never match what he imagined? A subtle, mesmerizing portrait of late-blooming passion, The Archive of Feelings showcases Peter Stamm at his best.

The Archive of Feelings: A Novel

Peter Stamm, short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize, breaks new ground in this haunting novel about survival, self-reliance, and art, available for the first time in paperback.All Days Are Night is the story of Gillian, a successful and beautiful woman. Married and working a dream job in television as a presenter and cultural correspondent after years of drama school, Gillian has her life entirely under control, until the night a car crash irrevocably shatters her world. Her husband is killed and her once-beautiful face is disfigured. Forced to confront an existence without the face she's known for, she must put her life back together and somehow turn her tragedy into a story of new beginnings.In spare and unadorned prose, Stamm examines beauty, pain, love, and reawakening--life in its rawest form--with honesty and empathy.

All Days are Night

Granta Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Stamm, Peter. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Stamm, Peter

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Stamm, Peter. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Agnes: A Novel

In Strange Gardens and Other Stories

On a Day Like This: A Novel

Agnes: A Novel

To the Back of Beyond: A Novel

All Days Are Night: A Novel

The Sweet Indifference of the World: A Novel

It's Getting Dark: Stories

The Archive of Feelings: A Novel

All Days are Night