Lisa Elsässer

Feuer ist eine seltsame Sache

«Seit Tagen liegt beim Hauseingang auf der Treppe eine Münze. Ich hebe sie nicht auf. Sie gehört mir nicht.»

«Fire is a strange thing» - was written on a piece of paper left by a man on a woman’s kitchen table. And because it wasn’t just any woman, but of all people his wife’s friend, the charged atmosphere this creates could soon become dangerous. It develops into a love affair…but not a simple one: «After that night, we parted at a traffic lights; it was early morning and they were just flashing on amber. Red or green would have only one meaning, I said. He laid his finger against my lips.»
A man, who was once a handsome man, is admitted to hospital as an emergency – and the night nurse, who has to care for him, is suddenly confronted with her past. In another of Elsässer’s stories, two women land in an old people’s home: they’ve forgotten that they are mother and daughter. Or there’s this tale: a visit to a dying aunt leads us into a world both familiar and unfamiliar: «Emma, whispered the aunt. That was my mother’s name. I only ever called her ‘mother’, the name Emma alienated me. Emma, or mother, sat down at her bedside.»
Lisa Elsässer’s short stories are taken from life – and life doesn’t always turn out successfully. Whether in a cramped room in a farmhouse in the Schächental or at a desk down on the plains, whether in a cemetery or in Italy, ghosts and hidden dangers lurk. And these force out memories, drag the unsaid and the repressed into the light. Lisa Elsässer’s blunt and individualistic prose crystallises the two great themes of literature: life and death.
(Martin Zingg, translated by Max Easterman, Rosie Goldsmith)

Recommended for translation by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia: www.12swissbooks.ch

Translation of title: Fire is a Strange Thing

Rotpunktverlag, Zürich 2013

ISBN: 978-3-85869-554-3