"My figures find themselves mostly in some kind of trouble, "explains Alissa Walser. "Their problems are usually not taken seriously by their counterparts. The private sphere in which my stories take place is only the exterior frame. But for me that is exactly the place where you find pure community."

Alissa Walser, daughter of the well-known German novelist Martin Walser, is considered to be one of the young literary stars in Germany. Born in 1961, she studied painting in New York and Vienna. In 1992 she received the coveted Ingeborg-Bachmann-Prize and the Bettina-von-Arnim-Prize. Her two books of short stories, Dies ist nicht meine ganze Geschichte (This is not my whole Story) and Die kleinere Hälfte der Welt (The smaller half of the World) were published by Rowohlt in 1994 and 2000 respectively.

Among her translations from English into German are plays by Edward Albee, Joyce Carol Oates and the "Diaries" by Sylvia Plath. Some of her stories have appeared in English translation in the literary magazines Grand Street and Open City .

REVIEWS

"It’s the aggressive impulse that Alissa Walser expresses most clearly; with the elegantly led instrument of a language which combines forced crudeness with delicate hints. Emotions, dark and forceful, play the central roles — exactly as if they were hidden behind a provocatively transparent veil."

Die Zeit

"Alissa Walser’s new stories are about seemingly ordinary people in ordinary situations: A woman is sitting in a restaurant and suddenly gains unsuspected insights into her fellow humans, or a daughter ponders her mother with whom she shares a lover. These inconspicuous events suddenly bring irritation, loneliness, isolation into orderly lives."

Die Woche