A gripping tale, by turns tragicomic and mythical.
DER WISENT
(The Bison)
by Konrad Bogusław Bach
Blessing Verlag/PRH Germany, August 2022
Heniek and Andrzeij live in a small town in Poland. One is a mechanic, the other a carpenter, and both are about to retire. They have never had the urge to see the world, but one day they leave their home town of Gajerudki and head west down the A2, the « Motorway to Freedom ». They’re trying to track down Beatka, who has left Heniek after 36 years of marriage to start a new life in the Netherlands. They’ve taken the Mercedes they were meant to fix for a customer, and when they don’t have enough money to fill it with proper fuel, they use cooking oil instead. After an accident involving a herd of deer, the two friends continue their journey on foot. Along the way, they find out things they never knew about each other, including some dark secrets – and when they encounter a European bison, they face a reckoning with their past.
Konrad Bogusław Bach was born in Nakło nad Notecią, Poland, in 1984, and grew up in Hanover. He studied theatre and Catholic theology, classical philosophy and screenwriting in Berlin, Krakow and Rome. In 2020, he completed his PhD on « Laughter on Stage », and now teaches at a secondary school in Frankfurt an der Oder. He has received a grant from the city of Nuremberg for his writing, and taken part in the Munich Screenwriting Workshop as well as the Jürgen Ponto Foundation’s creative writing workshop. His 2015 short film « Magdalenas Akte » has won several prizes. He is married with three children, and lives in Gubin on the Polish–German border. DER WISENT is his first novel.
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