Peter Weber

Der Wettermacher

«Nebel ist der Hauptexportartikel des schweizerischen Mittellandes, Nebel beherrscht das schweizerische Mittelland vom Oktober bis in den Februar, unter dem Nebel ist das Leben ausgesprochen sinnentleert, unter der mittelländischen Nebeldecke geht im Durchschnitt jedes zweite Kind ein, stirbt an Lichtmangel oder Perspektivenlosigkeit, während über der Nebeldecke grenzenlose Heiterkeit herrscht».

Take the Toggenburg Valley, Zurich, the lake, and main train station - add a young protagonist with an ear for local dialects and legends who lies through his teeth about everything without batting an eye.
When Peter Weber’s «Der Wettermacher» (The Weathermaker) came out in 1993, the book world was breath taken. Reading through and scrutinising the book twelve years later shows that for once the majority was right.

August Abraham Abderhalden, the hero of this brash and stylistically confident debut novel has a place in the fictional characters’ hall of fame. This self-searching man, with a need to explain the world, spouts words like a linguistic quick-change artist until even walls grow ears. Cleverly orchestrated, the tracks of his mischievous interpretations run back and forth between the town and countryside, through the murky depths of the 1980s. What is proverbially true of the weather goes for language here: it ‘does as it pleases’. And the author himself with his exuberant fantasy holds the reins during all these merry goings-on. In a wide sweep, from the Etruscans right up to an ‘Americanized Switzerland’ of indoor baths and petrol stations, between asphalt and molasses, he explains the world anew - and with such cunning rascality that after only a few pages we would be willing to let ourselves be carried off by his storytelling to the end of the world - or, even better, to the far corners of the Toggenburg Valley.

(Michel Mettler)

Translation of title: The Weathermaker

Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1993

ISBN: 3-518-40569-1