Since the local innkeeper family has made money, idyll and monstrosity have become even closer together in the Carinthia of Julia Jost’s debut novel. Their sound, their course through the village biographies are breathtaking.
The Gratschbacher Hof is located where the sharpest tooth of the Karawanken peaks into the sky, in southernmost Carinthia on the border with Slovenia, and so that you can find it, there are directions at the very beginning that practically take you into the slim book inhaled into it like one of those miniature turbo-powered vacuum cleaners.