Winner of the aspekte Prize, the most prestigious German prize for debut fiction, Swiss playwright and visual artist Ariane Koch’s Overstaying is an absurdist tour de force.
An isolated woman clashes with an enigmatic visitor in this funny, jagged parable about integration, difference and hospitality
An isolated young woman living in a small Swiss town decides to take in a mysterious stranger, known only as ‘the visitor’. His arrival introduces disturbance into her carefully sealed life, and the longer he stays, the more confounding he becomes. His joy causes her sadness, his sleep brings her insomnia, and she becomes convinced he is sneaking into her room, even eating her socks. As she tries to impose orders and regulations on her opaque visitor, the woman’s fantasies of power and control grow ever wilder.
Sly, wilful and full of slanted humour, Overstaying is a profound and uncanny exploration of hospitality, integration and the stranger within all of us.
Ariane Koch was born in Basel and studied fine arts and interdisciplinarity. She writes—often in collaboration—theater and performance texts, radio plays, and prose. Her texts have won numerous awards and have been performed in places like Basel, Berlin, Cairo, Istanbul, and Moscow. Overstaying is her debut novel.