Agnes

Peter Stamm's best-selling debut novel, Agnes, now available for the first time in the United States.
 
"Write a story about me," Agnes said to her lover, "so I know that you think of me." So he started to write the story of everything that had happened to them from the moment they met.
At first, he works with Agnes to create a narrative that is most true to life, but as time passes and he grows more enamored with the narrative he has begun, he continues writing on his own, imagining a future for them after he reaches the present. Happy couples do not necessarily make for compelling reading, and as Agnes sees the unexpected plot he has planned for her, the line between fiction and reality begins to blur.
In this unforgettable and haunting novel Stamm incisively examines the power of storytelling to influence thought and behavior, reaching a chilling conclusion.

Peter Stamm is the author of the novels All Days Are Night, Seven Years, On a Day Like This, and Unformed Landscape, and the short-storycollections We’re Flying and In Strange Gardens and Other Stories. Hisprize-winning books have been translated into more than thirty languages. For hisentire body of work and his accomplishments in fiction, he was short-listed for theMan Booker International Prize in 2013, and in 2014 he won the prestigiousFriedrich Holderlin Prize. He lives in Switzerland.

Michael Hofmann has translated the work of Gottfried Benn, Hans Fallada, Franz Kafka, Joseph Roth, and manyothers. In 2012 he was awarded the Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation by theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters. His Selected Poems was published in 2009,and Where Have You Been? Selected Essays in 2014. He lives in Florida and London.