Christoph Ransmayr

In his new novel Der Fallmeister, Austrian star author Christoph Ransmayr combines an intimate and tragic family story with a global dystopia.

The new novel is set in a gloomy world that has disintegrated into small states, somewhere at the end of the 22nd century. A doomsday atmosphere prevails. Megalomaniac rulers are drawing ever tighter borders and waging battles over drinking water resources. In this dystopian setting, the novel tells a tragic family story about an irascible father who performs his duties as a lock gate keeper on a raging river, causing a fatal accident. His son is the first-person narrator of the novel and wants to hold him accountable for his "murders." His search for the truth leads him deep back into his own past: driven by his passion for his own sister and his indignation over the fate of his mother, who was chased out of the country, he follows in his father's footsteps. With powerful imagery and great intensity, Christoph Ransmayr tells of a threatened world and the human hope for forgiveness.

Christoph Ransmayr, born in 1954 in Wels/Upper Austria, is one of the most important German-language authors. His books (including the bestselling novels Cox: or the passage of time and Atlas of an Anxious Man) have been translated into more than thirty languages. He has received numerous literary awards, including the Kleist Prize, the Prix du meilleur livre étranger, and, together with Salman Rushdie, the Prix Aristeion of the European Union.