The Frog in the Throat

“The novels of Markus Werner are so difficult because they are so thorough, not by being long, but by being solid, crystal, not foam. The fullness and complexity of the characters. The range of emotion. The brightness and variety of language. It’s an intensity of reading experience I’ve never quite had.” — Sarah Trudgeon, The Review of Contemporary Fiction“Brilliantly translated by [Michael] Hofmann, who provides an illuminating introduction, this sly and strange father-son dialogue deserves to be a cult classic.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review“[Michael] Hofmann’s translation is full of startling phrases and exciting rhythms.” —Robert Rubsam, The Washington Post “Markus Werner is a wonderful writer.” —Peter Stamm“The second novel by acclaimed Swiss novelist [Markus] Werner is just the sort of book [Michael] Hofmann was born to render into English…One marvels at the beauty of [Werner’s] sentences.”—Michael Autrey, Booklist“In Michael Hofmann’s pitch-perfect translation, father and son express themselves in voices that are distinct yet more similar than either would admit.” —Anna Aslanyan, TLS

Markus Werner (1944-2016) was born in Eschlikon, Switzerland, and raised in the canton of Schaffhausen. He studied German language and literature at the University of Zurich, where he wrote a doctoral thesis on the work of Max Frisch. For most of the 1970s and ‘80s, he was a teacher-a profession from which he retired eagerly in 1990 to become a full-time writer. As he put it in a rare self-portrait- “I smoke, write haltingly, and live in the country.” He wrote very haltingly, or rather meticulously indeed, publishing seven novels in the course of twenty years-among them Z ndel’s Exit (1984), Cold Shoulder (1989), and On the Edge (2004).

Michael Hofmann is a German-born, British-educated poet, critic, and translator. His most recent books are One Lark, One Horse (poems) and Messing About in Boats (essays). He has translated several works, including Alfred D blin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, and edited an anthology of writing by Malcolm Lowry, The Voyage That Never Ends. In 2024, his translation of Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel Kairos won the International Booker Prize.

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