His girlfriend Bea has left him without as much as a goodbye, after ten years together. His search for her takes the unnamed narrator, a screenplay writer in his early forties, to the sites of their love and his biography: Ticino, Basel, his father’s house in Aargau, Paris in May 1968 . . . In the New World, in San Francisco, the narrator finally finds Bea. And he discovers that his best friend Leo had something to do with her disappearance. Back in Europe to confront Leo, the narrator finds out he has passed away. In Berlin, he begins to write a letter to his dead friend: Dear Leo . . . Love and friendship, farewells and separations, looking back and setting out are the themes of this novel, written in the form of a long letter.

Hansjörg Schneider retraces familiar paths around Basel: to Kannenfeld Park, to Petersplatz Square and back again. Alert to the impressions of the present, sensitive to the memories echoing with every step, open to literary and philosophical reflections. It is a joy to accompany this extraordinary writer.

»For me, there is only the enlightening clarity of language. Language sheds light on the world, on life, on death.«
Hansjörg Schneider

Timelessly poetic stories from the author of the Hunkeler novels.

Featuring an afterword by Beatrice von Matt.

These short prose texts take us on walks with the flaneur Hansjörg Schneider, passing through cities and landscapes, enjoying the sight of a girl reading, of Bedouins or a London gentleman. The author uses sparing brushstrokes to portray places, situations, and people we almost think we know, as though we ran across them every day without ever seeing them in such affectionate clarity.

»These stories are a must for those wanting to learn the art of simple writing.«
Beatrice von Matt in her afterword

Hansjörg Schneider is a master of the short form. The Owl over the Rhine collates the most wonderful of his texts from the last 20 years: a homage to his chosen home of Basel appears alongside memories of his childhood in rural Aargau, together with observations of people and everyday scenes, texts about nature and jazz, about dialect as a secret language and the perils of technology, about actors, artists, the literati and his own writing.

Hansjörg Schneider kept a new diary over the last ten years. He made notes on his reading, on encounters and projects, recording the moments of happiness that came by day, and the nightmares that haunted him by night. In the clear, direct language so treasured by readers of his Hunkeler novels, Hansjörg Schneider looks back at his life, his childhood, his marriage, his successes and failures as a writer – movingly and with laconic humour. The diary of a writer who has preserved the ability to be amazed: about the road that he has travelled, about the beauty of nature and the shortcomings of humankind, about the new day, and about the night when he first dreamt of hippos.

- A book of comfort for times of loss. - Strikingly open and honest. - Hansjörg Schneider's last crime novel ›Hunkeler and the Eyes of Oedipus‹ was number 1 on the Swiss best-seller list. »When I wrote this book, I concentrated on authenticity rather than getting caught up with stylistic finesse. It is a diary of my grief. I could have chiseled a gravestone for Astrid. But as I am a writer, not a stonemason, this book is my gift for her instead.« When Hansjörg Schneider's wife Astrid died of cancer in 1997, they had lived together for more than thirty years. »The truth is that we loved each other from the very beginning, and for a lifetime.« After her death, Hansjörg Schneider kept a diary for one year. The result is a personal book about a great love and a moving document of grief.

The long wait is over – Detective Hunkeler is back on the job. Albeit very reluctantly.

The tenth case in the best-selling Hunkeler series.

A peaceful sunny morning in Basel’s Kannenfeld Park. A sudden scream disturbs Peter Hunkeler’s first coffee of the day: someone has found a dead body behind the bushes.
He may be in retirement, but a policeman is always a policeman, at least for other people. So Hunkeler has to take a look. And he realizes he knows the dead man: a well-known journalist and art critic.

Peter Hunkeler, now a retired inspector of the Basel police force, hospitalized following surgery and shared the room with an old acquaintance: Stephan Fankhauser, a colourful character. Once a wild member of the 1968 student movement, over the course of the years he made his way through the institutions and became director of a bank. Now Fankhauser is seriously ill. One night, Hunkeler had just been given a sleeping pill, he noticed a nurse with a ruby ring on her hand administering an injection to the fellow patient. Strangely, Fankhauser is resisting it intently. And does not the night nurse usually wear a diamond ring? The next morning, when Hunkeler wakes up, Fankhauser is dead. Was it all just a dream? Hunkeler is not sure, but he resolves to get to the bottom of the matter.

One of Switzerland’s best known and most popular writers looks back – in love, in grief, in anger and tenderness.

»I am a child of the Aare river. It is the most beautiful river in Switzerland, unimposing but a charming sight.«

Hansjörg Schneider writes about the Aargau region, the Nothern Swiss landscape that made him who he is today. About the gentle hills and meadows and the bleak, authoritarian atmosphere of his childhood and youth in the post-war years. About his time as a student in Basel up to his start into a life dedicated to literature.
Where does a writer come from? Authentic, touching and not the slightest bit conciliatory, Hansjörg Schneider traces his journey through life.

Three herdsmen spend the summer on a lonely alp in the mountains. Bored, they make a female doll that suddenly comes to life and begins to speak. The three men have their way with her, but she becomes more and more frightening.

Hansjörg Schneider's dramatization of the spine-chilling Alpine legend prompted a scandal in the seventies - and a lawsuit for pornography. To this day, it has lost none of its explosive power.

With an afterword by Ulrich Weber on the story of the controversial play Sennentuntschi.

Where is the theatre director Bernhard Vetter? His houseboat was found abandoned by the dam of the town of Märkt, but there is no sign of the man himself. And this several days after a performance of ›Oedipus the King‹ in Basel caused a real stir – so much so that a high society lady knocked out two of the director's teeth with her garnet ring. The press are in a frenzy of speculation: could the director be lying at the bottom of the Rhine? Is this the bourgeoisie's revenge on this uncompromising man of the theatre? Peter Hunkeler, detective inspector from the Basel Criminal Investigation Department, has only six weeks left until he retires. But is he ready to leave the stage? With mixed feelings he steps into the theatre milieu of which he himself had been part as a young man. He comes across old acquaintances, each with a score to settle with the theatre director. And finds himself in the enigmatic twilight world of Basel's Rhine harbour, in that no man's land between Switzerland, Germany and France where quite other powers hold sway.