Jens Steiner

Carambole

«Es ist ein Land, in dem alle zur Katze werden, ein Land ohne Menschen und voller Stille. Schleichen, sitzen, lauern, schlafen, mehr braucht man hier nicht zu tun. Frieden ist oberstes Gebot. Muss ein schönes Land sein, denke ich.»

Three old men regularly meet for dinner and a game of Carambole, a game in which one nudges little colourful stones with a bigger white stone, the goal being to put them down the holes in the board. Jens Steiner’s second novel is called Carambole. Through individual mosaics he tells the story of an idyllic village whose idle monotony is about to literally explode. Summer break is almost there. While the three old men have settled in their eventlessness, three young boys are burning to see something happen. Suddenly they all hear a bang. A factory exploded, the rumour goes.
Steiner gathers his narration around this signal. Just as in the Carambole game, he nudges his tokens and moves them around. The explosion serves as an orientation on the timeline. Manu, one of the boys, is searching for some bugs when he hears the bang. And Igor is speaking to Schorsch at the fountain, a mysterious vagabond who appears here and there. He is the novel’s mysterious epicentre. Its twelve chapters narrate in the first or the third person and from the viewpoint of different figures. Only gradually the complexity of the relations holding the village together become recognisable as such. Jens Steiner creates striking miniatures which finally fall into place like pieces of a puzzle. In an atmospheric way he describes a treacherous idyll.

(Beat Mazenauer, transl. by Anja Hälg)

Carambole received the Schweizer Buchpreis in 2013.

Dörlemann Verlag, Zürich 2013

ISBN: 978-3-908777-92-2