PHILIPP WEISS
NEWS: In August 2023 my novel "At the Edge of the World People Sit Laughing" will be published in Chinese translation - 人坐在世界边缘，笑 (East China Normal University Press/Vi Horae, translated by Chen Zao). I am honored to be invited to the Shanghai Bookfair and the Shanghai International Literary Week (SILW) in August to present my work.
NEWS: Very happy to announce that for my new new world-novel (The Disquiet of the Planet's Skin) I received the distinguished Robert-Musil-Scholarship 2023-2026 that will allow me to finish my work without financial pressure.
NEWS: I will present my work in New York (April 20th, 2023) and Easton, Pennsylvania (at the Austrian Studies Association Conference) this April.
NEWS: Currently I am working on a new book. I call it a "world novel", connecting dozens of places, characters and stories around the planet within a narrative network, following flows of people, energy, money, information, raw materials, goods and ecological interconnections. It is my conviction that we can only answer for and change what we can imagine and therefore tell. Working title: "Die Unruhe der Planetenhaut" ("Disquiet of the planet's skin"). Expected publication 2026, Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin.
NEWS: My novel "Le grand rire des hommes assis au bord du monde" (Seuil, translation by Olivier Mannoni) has been nominated for the French literary prize "Prix Femina", which was founded at the beginning of the 20th century as a feminist, avant-garde Anti-Goncourt.
NEWS: The French translation (translated by Olivier Mannoni) of my novel "Am Weltenrand sitzen die Menschen und lachen" will be published by Éditions du Seuil (Paris) in August at this year's "rentrée littéraire"! Title: Le Grand Rire des Hommes assis au Bord du Monde!
NEWS: For research I wanted to go to the UN climate conference in Santiago de Chile. Due to the protests in Chile the COP 25 was relocated to Madrid. I traveled anyway: by train to France, by cargo ship to the Caribbean, by plane to Peru and by bus to Chile. Two essays for the Austrian newspaper "Der Standard" were written on the trip. Read them here (in German):
Die Containerisierung der Welt, Der Standard, Album, December 2019
Der Kapitalismus ohne Maske, Der Standard, Album, January 2020
NEWS: My new play "Der letzte Mensch" ("The last human") will premiere in Vienna's Hamakom Nestroyhof Theater on the 8th of October 2019!
NEWS: "At the edge of the world we sit and laugh" wins the Rauris Literary Prize 2019!
NEWS: Read a review of my novel including an interview in the oldest japanese newspaper, the Mainichi Shimbun! Click here.
NEWS: "At the edge of the world we sit and laugh" will be published in Chinese by Vie Horae (East China Normal University Press)!
NEWS: "At the edge of the world we sit and laugh" awarded as best german debut novel 2018 (Klaus-Michael Kühne Prize)!
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NEWS: "At the edge of the world we sit and laugh" will be published in French by Éditions du seuil (Paris) in 2020, translated by Olivier Mannoni.
NEWS: Novel awarded with the Literary Prize of the Jürgen Ponto Foundation 2018!
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NOVEL PUBLISHED
In autumn 2018 my 5-volume and 1000-pages debut-novel Am Weltenrand sitzen die Menschen und lachen ("At the edge of the world we sit and laugh") was published in German by Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin.
1000 pages, five volumes - one novel. In "At the edge of the world man sits and laughs" tells about our planet’s transformation in the Anthropocene - the period of earth history, in which man has become the central geological force. Between France and Japan, between the 19th and 21st century, in the form of encyclopedia, manga, novella, audio transcription and notebook, the novel creates a panopticon of our fleeing reality.
Seventeen-year-old Paulette experiences the uprising of the Paris Commune in 1871, travels - as one of the first European women - to Meiji-era Japan and is finally covered under the ice of the french Alps for over 130 years. Climate researcher Chantal, her great-great-granddaughter, follows her tracks to the Far East, writing a cynical history of the universe while escaping love and its inverting power. Jona, left behind, sets off on a search to Japan to find not Chantal but a multiple catastrophe: an earthquake, a tsunami, a nuclear accident. Nine-year-old Akio strays through devastated territory for several days. He finds some comfort in Satoshi, a homeless day laborer and nuclear gypsy slowly dying from the effects of radiation. Driven by a phantom pain, young Japanese Abra wanders through Tokyo and loses herself in the lonely loops of her virtualized self.
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© Copyright Philipp Weiss 2017