Jürg Schubiger

Nicht schwindelfrei

«You’re making progress, Marion said shortly before Paul held the spoon so awkwardly that the soup dribbled down his little finger and into his sleeve. Blunders such as these no longer belonged to their everyday. One didn’t expect these anymore.»

What exactly is going on around him, Paul can’t say, he doesn’t know. He has, though, an undeniable suspicion that something isn’t right: «He was ill, so it was said, or, had been. But it wasn’t like that for him at all. He didn’t have the precise word for this process the troubled people around him called ‹convalescence›. He added the word ‹contemplative› or ‹revitalizing› or ‹re-emerging›.»
It is gradually revealed that Paul von Matt has dropped out of his previous life. He’s not going to work any more, he’s unable to do anything; something has happened. He stumbles through his daily routine, which he could hardly cope with if he hadn’t the help of his wife Marion, and he has to live with the fact that his memory is failing. But then, he suddenly and surprisingly remembers something, which is impossible for him to know in such detail, though it’s now right before his eyes.
Something has shifted in his mind – we aren’t told «what». Paul himself knows even less, and sometimes doesn’t even know at all, even how to behave. Nonetheless, he who forgets so many things, is not himself forgotten. His brother Theo drops by from time to time, likewise his work colleague Steff – and little by little, from these various elements, there crystallises an idea of the life Paul must once have led.
Jürg Schubiger’s novel «No Head for Heights» tells of this other life. Schubiger is a virtuoso of the subtle shift, the almost un-noticed transition and he sends his protagonist on a precarious journey into the unknown. Even Paul has no idea what awaits him there, because he has lost his memory, he’s forgotten everything. He’s now open to everything and everything is possible. These events are told in a supple yet tense prose, in which all hangs in the balance until the very end.

(Martin Zingg)

Recommended for translation by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia:
www.12swissbooks.ch

Translation of title: No Head for Heights

Haymon Verlag, Innsbruck / Wien 2013

ISBN: 978-3-7099-7139-0