Xaver Bayer "Breath"

Breath
Xaver Bayer has made us wait twenty years for this novel, and now it is here – and completely out of time. "Breath" is an epistolary novel, and what happens is found in and between the lines that the two write to each other.

Veit is a writer, Dora is a translator; they have made the agreement not to see each other for a year. We do not learn why; it is a game, an experiment. Dora lives in the city and increasingly feels defenseless against the demands of our time, while Veit takes up his post in an old farmhouse in the countryside, wandering through the deserted area, observing the birds, the trees, the wind.

Both observe the present without sharing it; both practice withdrawal, each in their own way. The distance between them is not great, but it does not remain the same either. It grows, like the longing for another life.

Xaver Bayer
Xaver Bayer, born in 1977 in Vienna, studied philosophy and German studies. He now lives and works as a freelance writer in Vienna, writing novels, stories, and plays. He has received numerous awards for his literary work, including the Reinhard-Priessnitz Prize (2004), the Hermann-Lenz Prize (2008), and the Austrian Promotion Prize from the City of Vienna (2011). His works published by Jung und Jung include "Weiter" (2006), "Die durchsichtigen Hände" (2008), and "Geheimnisvolles Knistern aus dem Zauberreich" (2014). His debut with Haymon, "Atlas," a story, will be released in 2017 in a bibliophile edition.
Awards:
2023 Robert Musil Scholarship, 2020 Austrian Book Prize (for "Geschichten mit Marianne"), 2019 Lower Austria Cultural Prize, 2011 Austrian Promotion Prize for Literature from the City of Vienna, 2008 Hermann-Lenz Prize, 2005 Austrian Promotion Prize for Literature, 2004 Reinhard-Priessnitz Prize, 2002 Hermann-Lenz Scholarship.