Seven Years | Granta

  • Published: 05/04/2012
  • ISBN: 9781847085535
  • Granta Books
  • 272 pages

Seven Years

Peter Stamm

Translated by Michael Hofmann

Alex is caught between two very different women. Sonia, his wife, is intelligent, beautiful, charming and ambitious and together they have established a successful architectural firm and a life of easy luxury. But in the background is Ivona, who is dull, plain and passive. The only thing she offers Alex is her love, unconditionally, which inspires in him a queasy mixture of repulsion and passion. Alex knows he must make a choice, but when Ivona becomes pregnant, life takes an unexpected turn which leaves him more puzzled than ever by the mysteries of desire.

One of Europe's most exciting writers

New York Times

It's so cleanly written, it's philosophically interesting, yet not for a moment does it sacrifice drama, character [or] story. It's like a beautifully made Le Corbusier house inside of which are hidden some very ugly, but honest, things

Zadie Smith

How many writers have written with this degree of brutal perceptiveness and wisdom about the indeterminate depths of heterosexual desire? Wharton, Roth (sometimes), James Salter, Kundera. Stamm inscribes his name on that august list. Quietly shattering

Neel Mukherjee, The Times

The Author

Peter Stamm was born in 1963, in Scherzingen, Switzerland. He is the author of the novels Agnes, On A Day Like This, Unformed Landscape and the collection In Strange Gardens and Other Stories, as well as numerous short stories and radio plays. He lives in Winterthur.

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The Translator

Michael Hofmann is a poet, translator and critic. His latest book of poems is One Lark, One Horse. He recently translated Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel Kairos.

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