Brenner

＂Shrouded in a thick cloud of cigar smoke, Hermann Arbogast Brenner, scion of an old and famous cigar dynasty, needs to settle his affairs, codifying his forty-six years of life, in a Proustian attempt to conjure the wounds, joys, and sensations of his childhood in the rolling countryside of the Aargau region of Switzerland. Estranged from his wife and two children, he decides there is no point in squirreling away his fortune, so he buys himself a Ferrari 328 GTS and drives around sharing cigars with his few remaining friends. In this roman áa clef, writing and smoking become intertwined through the act of remembering, as Brenner, a fallible, wounded, yet lovable antihero, searches for epiphany, to unearth memories just out of reach＂--

Hermann Burger (1942-1989) was a Swiss author, critic, and professor. Author of four novels and several volumes of essays, short fiction and poetry, he first achieved fame with his novel Schilten, the story of a mad village schoolteacher who teaches his students to prepare for death. He died by suicide days after the publication of Brenner.
Translator Bio: Adrian Nathan West is the author of The Aesthetics of Degradation as well as the translator of numerous works of contemporary European literature, including Pere Gimferrer’s Fortuny, Josef Winkler’s Graveyard of Bitter Oranges, and Marianne Fritz’s The Weight of Things.