Dreaming Jack

Winner of Switzerland's Grand Prix Literatur 2024In his short lyric novella, Dreaming Jack, Klaus Merz transports us into a family dynamic distilled like none other-the story of a Swiss bakers' family assuaging their torments and demons, all the while struggling with illness and mortality, with abandonment and absolution. With spare, poignant observations, Lukas Renz, Merz's young protagonist, propels us cinematically into his predestination-and with it, the death of almost an entire household. Still, each passing is heartfelt, each soul duly honored, each artifact gracefully embalmed and kept on display. Dreaming Jack is a work like no other: the distillation of a common-uncommon, a tragi-comic novella where both the micro- and macroscopic meet on the hem of Grandmother's winter coat, in the flutter of Mother's nightdress, in Father's contorted epileptic fits, or the cosmic pulsing of Brother Sol's continuously expanding head. An uncanny, Swiss coming-of-age story, exquisitely morphed into English by poet and translator Marc Vincenz.