Peter Stamm

"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...

"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 that 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...

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...