With wit and dry humour, Bettina Gärtner portrays middle-aged Herrmann and his middle-class life between capital and countryside. Despite being sickly and rather unambitious, Herrmann would like to climb the career ladder in his company. What he doesn’t want, though, is to keep running his recently deceased father’s dog breeding business. But what would the people in the village say?
Then, his private and professional life is turned completely upside down within a single week as people and incidents from the past make an unexpected but disturbing appearance – above all Orban, Herrmann’s friend from his youth who had disappeared to England 30 years ago …
Bettina Gärtner’s novel Herrmann is an original portrayal of today’s times, with a humorous take on the quirky personalities we all know.
»Hermann is a book straight out of our day and age – brimming with reality, tragic comedy and brilliant linguistic accuracy.« (Björn Hayer, Cicero)
»Besides a plenty bizarre background description about life in the Austrian province, Herrmann is a also a novel about contemporary working environments which is presented in an eloquent way full of linguistic humor.« (Veronika Hofeneder, literaturhaus.at)