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Zusatztext “A kind of parable…simple and haunting.” — New York Review of Books “ Agnes is a moody! unsettled! and elusive little fable—and it’s always interesting.” — Wall Street Journal “A haunting psychological study.” — The New Yorker “A provocative and mesmerizing book.” — Publishers Weekly “An urgent and unsettling read.” — Library Journal “This short novel should appeal to readers enchanted by [Stamm’s] elliptical style…an extended meditation on the interrelationship between life and fiction.” — Kirkus Reviews “This tale moves briskly and plausibly toward the dark conclusion it announces at the outset. Stamm manages to dramatize the truism that writers become caught up in the world their words create! that readers become enamored of characters in fiction! and both mourn when characters suffer…gripping…unsettling.” — Booklist Informationen zum Autor Peter Stamm Klappentext Peter Stamm's best-selling debut novel, Agnes, now available for the first time in paperback. "Write a story about me," Agnes said to her lover, "so I know what 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 writing on his own, imagining a future for them after he reaches the present. Happy couples do not necessarily make for compelling reading, and as Agnes sees the unexpected plot he has planned for her, the line between fiction and reality begins to blur. In this unforgettable and haunting novel Stamm incisively examines the power of storytelling to influence thought and behavior, reaching a chilling conclusion. 1 Agnes is dead. Killed by a story. All that’s left of her now is this story. It begins on that day, nine months ago, when we first met in the Chicago Public Library. It was cold when we first met. It generally is cold in this city. But it’s colder now, and it’s snowing. The snow is blowing across Lake Michigan, on the gale-force wind I can hear even through the soundproof glass in my picture windows. It’s snowing, but the snow won’t settle, it gets picked up and whirled on its way, and only settles where the wind can’t get at it. I’ve switched off the light, and look out at the illuminated tips of the skyscrapers, at the American flag that gets tugged this way and that by the wind, in the beam of a searchlight, and at the empty streets far below, where, even now, in the middle of the night, the lights change from green to red and red to green, as though nothing had happened, or was happening. This is where we lived together for a while, Agnes and I, in this apartment. It was our home, though now that Agnes has gone, the place seems strange to me, and impossible. Agnes is just a step away, no more than a thickness of glass, but the windows don’t open. For about the millionth time, I’m watching the video that Agnes made of the day we went hiking—on Columbus Day. Columbus Day in Hoosier National Forest , it says, on the box and the cassette, in her tidy script, underlined twice with a ruler, like the way we used to underline the answers to our math problems when we were children. I’ve got the sound switched off. The pictures seem so much more real than this darkened apartment. They have a peculiar radiance, the radiance of a great expanse of open country, on an October afternoon. An empty expanse, no town for miles around, no village, not even a farmhouse. Staccato shots, without much variety. A series of fresh starts, attempts to capture the landscape. Sometimes I am able to guess what prompted Agnes to press the record button: a peculiar-shaped cloud, a billboard, a strip of forest in the distance...
