Mountainish
Zsuzsanna Gahse
Incredible how differently mountains are seen. Ski slopes, investment opportunities, holiday regions, hunting grounds, places for climbing expeditions up to the sky, ursine paradise.
A narrator and her dog are criss-crossing the Swiss Alps. She travels with friends who share her interest in food, languages and their topographical contexts. They collect colours, even look for colourlessness, and develop the idea of a walk-in diary, a vain attempt to archive their observations, encompassing portraits, descriptions and ruminations on mountains, hotels, people, language, food, flora and fauna.
Gradually, other mountains appear in their observations and memories, as do the mountains of literature and art. Mountains may be sites of fear and awe, of narrow-mindedness, racism and ever-looming collapse; Alpine lodges may be places of hospitality, retreat and unexpected encounters; of nature under threat.
In 515 notes, Zsuzsanna Gahse unfolds a finely woven interplay between her six characters while giving us a vivid panorama of mountain worlds, a multi-layered typology of all things mountainish.
‘Mountainish is an idiosyncratic book – an unusual combination of intellectual speculation, delicate observation, and sustained flippancy. In Zsuzsanna Gahse’s Alps you might find a group of buses doing a dance routine or a new theory of language; friends discussing cave art or an unfortunate donkey plunging to her death.’ — Daisy Hildyard
Somewhere in the Swiss Alps – amidst rock, scree, lakes and caves, between ochre and red, and in the place ‘where vowels fly through the mountain skies – lies Mountainish. Zsuzsanna Gahse’s observations, at once sharp and supple, challenge us to look, to listen – to look and listen all over again. I loved it!’ — Amy Arnold
Zsuzsanna Gahse, born in Budapest in 1946, has lived in Vienna, Kassel, Stuttgart and Lucerne, and is now based in Müllheim (Switzerland). Her literary work moves between prose and poetry, narrative and scenic texts. She has published more than thirty books, most recently Bergisch teils farblos (2021) and Zeilenweise Frauenfeld (2023), both with Edition Korrespondenzen in Vienna. A number of her stage projects have also been performed. She was awarded the Johann Heinrich Voss Prize of the German Academy in Darmstadt for her translations from Hungarian to German in 2010, and the Swiss Grand Prix for Literature in 2019.