All is Well Here
Immer ist alles schön

weber cover
Limmat Verlag
February 2017 / 240pp
Fiction
  • Shortlisted for the Swiss Book Prize 2017

This book is outside of the five-year window for guaranteed assistance with English language translation. We suggest getting in touch with the relevant funding body for an informal conversation about the possibility of support. Please refer to to our  recommendations page for books that are currently covered by our funding guarantee.

review

A beautiful debut about a struggling single mother, All Is Well Here considers how lonely and frightening life can be both as a child and as an adult.

The novel tells the story of Anais, her brother Bruno and their mother Maria, who is different from other mothers. It starts with a holiday at a campsite where Maria abandons her children to go dancing. After the family  returns home, the reader learns about their life through a series of episodes recounted by Anais. It soon becomes  apparent that the mother is troubled in a lot of ways and that she is battling with alcoholism. Eventually Maria walks out,  leaving the children on their own. Anais and Bruno retreat further into an imaginative game in which they recreate natural landscapes from within their apartment. Fantasy and reality flow into each other until they become one. The novel ends with the authorities breaking into the flat to get to the children.

Weber writes in a distinctive, ethereal prose using carefully-chosen language to convey the puzzling complexity of a child’s view of the world.

press quotes

Julia Weber precisely depicts a broken world, immediately transforming painful reality into literary truth.

– Neue Zürcher Zeitung

about the author

Julia Weber was born in 1983 in Moshi, Tanzania. Her family returned to Zurich in 1985. She studied creative writing at the Literaturinstitut in Biel from 2009 to 2012. In 2012 she founded Literaturdienst (www.literaturdienst.ch), and she is also the co-founder of the art action group ‘Literatur für das, was passiert’. Immer ist alles schön is her debut novel. Weber lives in Zurich with her husband and child.

rights information

Agentur Altas (Switzerland)

Contact: Katharina Altas

Tel: +41 313 335 038

Email: literatur@agenturaltas.ch

www.agenturaltas.ch

translation assistance

Pro Helvetia covers up to 100% of the effective translation costs for literary works by Swiss authors.

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