The Frog in the Throat

We pay attention to Michael Hofmann's translations here, not only for his skill in turning German into English (e.g., Joseph Roth's The Radetzky March and Jenny Erpenbeck's Kairos) but for his taste in the books he chooses to translate. So when, in the introduction to this book, he described Werner, a Swiss novelist I hadn't heard of before, as "exquisitely addictive," as "swift," "bleak," and "deadly," well, I had to keep reading. And I acquired an appetite for Werner too, which likely won't be satisfied with this one book. The story is slight, alternating between the voices of a lapsed, disgraced pastor and his late dairy-farmer father, who refuses to forgive his son even in death, but it's the voices that are the pull, grouchy rants worthy of Thomas Bernhard or Michel Houellebecq that are somehow refreshing and even humane in their flaws and fury. I don't remember when bitter misanthropy has made me so glad to be alive.