In a small Swiss village, a girl disappears under mysterious circumstances. Almost forty years later, the first-person narrator looks back on the traumatic events and descends into the archives of his memory.
A text about memory, friendship and transience. A novel like a requiem, melancholic, moving, comforting.
Author Christian Rechsteiner (*1976) lives and writes in Kreuzlingen.
After attending the Thurgau teacher training college in the 1990s, he studied German and philosophy at the University of Zurich. He abandoned his studies in 2001 to pursue his career as a writer and has since published numerous short stories (“The Weinberger Archive”, “The Liberation”, etc.).
Rechsteiner regularly publishes in literary magazines (Manuskripte, Lichtungen etc.) and reads at literary festivals (Wortlaut, Solothurn Literature Days, KIK etc.)
With “1986”, Christian Rechsteiner creates a gripping, captivating story about a part of Switzerland in the 1980s.
He interweaves philosophical questions about truth, memory, fear and death with life and growing up on the very edge of Switzerland. The narrative captivates with the stories of various almost archetypal characters embedded in the provincial stench of the small village of W., which lies somewhere between Märstetten, X. and Dotnacht.
“My accidental W.” He connects global disasters (Chernobyl) with regional traumas (Edith Trittenbass) and the childhood of the first-person narrator and his friends Sascha, Tom and Selina Mangold. “Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, grandmother. A line of tradition.”
Before “1986” is available in print form, Rechsteiner is initially publishing his latest text as a podcast in ten episodes.
The novel is read by his childhood friend Marc Baumeler (journalist, podcaster), who is the same age as him, in a compelling, touching and sometimes theatrical way, “with a voice like a Japanese knife”.
The serial publication follows in the tradition of feature novels, which were the predominant form of first publication in parts of Europe, especially in the 19th century.
In addition to popular and entertainment literature, masterpieces of world literature, for example by Gustave Flaubert, Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, were also published as feature novels. “1986. A Requiem” is ideal for this with its suspense and cliffhangers.
