Thomas Hürlimann

This book, nominated for the Swiss Book Prize, may be compared to Eco’s The Name of the Rose (Il nome della rosa) with some exaggeration. “Adapt and then you will survive,” is the advice given to eleven-year-old Arthur Goldau when his mother takes him to a convent boarding school in the Swiss mountains in the autumn of 1963 to be made a man, as the boy’s father, a colonel, wishes. In a remote place where snow falls in September and where the last Austrian Empress, Zita Habsburg, comes to visit once a year, Arthur becomes inmate no. 230. But the massive walls of the monastery, where time seems to turn in circles, hold a tremendous secret. It is said that a precious diamond from the Habsburg crown treasure has been kept there since the Habsburg monarchy’s collapse in 1918.

Published by Argo, 2024