The Piping Voice

Gert Hofmann counts as one of the most successful and most widely translated German writers of the last twenty years. Now the novel which catapulted him almost overnight into the front ranks of contemporary German literature is published in a new edition. Die Fistelstimme is not only the story of a small-time swindler, it also describes a man living on the fringe of society fighting for his own life, his own reality, and the right to deal with his past on his own terms. Remembering the countless failures in his life, the narrator opposes a generally acknowledged order that seems to recognize nothing but success. This book, Gert Hofmann's first novel, received the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis in 1979.