Alex Capus reveals how he became a successful author: in blissful times when it still snowed and ideas were born in bars. In doing so, he courageously shakes up his own monument.
Alex Capus’s literary work consists, on the one hand, of thoroughly researched, elegantly entertaining historical novels in which an individual, or as in the most recent novel “Susanna”, published last year, an individual does something amazing in the overall structure of the world. On the other hand, the Swiss writer regularly publishes autobiographical stories that celebrate the small in the large and also unfold contemplative life plans, which in turn reveal an astonishing generality. “The Little House on the Sunny Slope” is one such story, but largely a poetological essay, and this combination makes the slim book a fine, cheerful and often very funny attempt at poetic appropriation of the world.