Fremde Verwandtschaften (Unknown Relations)

»You don’t know everything about yourself, especially the most important things.« The author of this novel is becoming increasingly aware of this revelation.

During a trip to a conference in Western Africa, unknown areas of thought open up to a Viennese architect in his mid-forties. In sleepless nights, aimlessly wandering through the foreign city and making increasingly strange encounters, he is more and more alienated by his own ideas and actions, his responsibility and his routines as architect, European, father, son and husband. The more he questions himself, the more the pillars of his current life and his past start crumbling.

 Unknown relations is a linguistic masterpiece, a large-scale reflection on existence, full of details and subtleties, false bottoms and hidden trails.