More Than Just a Foreigner

»Now they’re coming to take Jakob away« was the first sentence of Gstrein’s first novel, published in 1988. From this starting point, he traces an arc to the present day and sheds light on his story-writing process. Who is the »I« in his novels? What is truthfulness? How are writing and morality linked? What do Gauss and mathematics have to do with it all? And can you be an American writer if you grew up in Tyrol?

»In the morning I enter my study overlooking the TV Tower, and leave it again in the evening, having filled a page or not. And depending on this, I am either someone or no one, I either exist or I don’t, and that’s the full story.«