[erepsysoulptnw]

He has been discussed as a potential Nobel candidate, he's won the Premio Strega and, at least in German, he's currently being translated as if the publisher's life depended on it.

I have read and finished Microcosms (in German translation: excellent translation, btw., as far as I can see) and I am awestruck.

It's a great, great, great book, wonderful, insightful (even though I dislike its politics) and rich...it's a couple of pieces on towns and villages in italy, mixing invented stories with real characters, essayistic musings and heartbreakingly wonderful descriptions of the landscape. It's like hundreds of tiny stories, wonderfully told. If Bernhard liked people I'd say it's almost Bernhardesque at times, but it's not because Magris deep love for the landscape and its inhabitants is clearly one of the determining factors in tthis wonder of a book.

I've quotes from the German here