A new novel of artful understatement about mortality, estrangement, and the absurdity of life from the acclaimed author of Unformed Landscape and In Strange Gardens

On a day like any other, Andreas changes his life. When a routine doctor's visit leads to an unexpected prognosis, a great yearning takes hold of him--but who can tell if it is homesickness or wanderlust? Andreas leaves everything behind, sells his Paris apartment; cuts off all social ties; quits his teaching job; and waves goodbye to his days spent idly sitting in cafes--to look for a woman he once loved, half a lifetime ago. The monotony of days has been keeping him in check; now he hopes for a miracle and for a new beginning.

Andreas' travels lead him back to the province of his youth, back to his hometown in Switzerland where he returns to familiar streets, where his brother still lives in their childhood home, and where Fabienne, a woman he was obsessed with in his youth, visits the same lake they once swam in together. Andreas, still consumed with longing for his lost love and blinded by the uncertainty of his future, is tormented by the question of what might have been if things had happened differently.

Peter Stamm has been praised as a stylistic ascetic and his prose as distinguished by lapidary expression, telegraphic terseness, and finely tuned sensitivity (Bookforum). In On a Day Like This, Stamm's unobtrusive observational style allows us to journey with our antihero through his crises of banality, of living in his empty world, and the realization that life is finite--that one must live it, as long as that is possible.

Praise for Unformed Landscape:

Sensitive and unnerving. . . . An uncommonly intimate work, one that will remind the reader of his or her own lived experience with a greater intensity than many of the books that are published right here at home. --The New Republic Online

If Albert Camus had lived in an age when people in remote Norwegian fishing villages had e-mail, he might have written a novel like this.--The New Yorker

Unformed Landscape has a refreshing purity, a lack of delusion, a lack of hype.--Los Angeles Times

"In the quiet but evocative latest from Swiss writer Stamm (Unformed Landscape), Andreas, a 40-something Swiss expatriate, teaches German in Paris and spends much of his time musing over Fabienne, the lost love of his youth, while sleeping with women he doesn't much like. Andreas thinks of himself as quiet and passive, and is thus surprised by the intensity of his reaction when told he may have a serious lung disorder. He reacts by allowing a casual affair with 24-year-old Delphine (a teaching colleague who had briefly been involved with Andreas's best friend, Jean-Marc), to intensify. He tells Delphine about his illness; she reciprocates by taking care of him as he recovers from surgery. The two seem poised to take a chance on one another, but Andreas's fidelity to Fabienne is still to be reckoned with. Andreas's sorrows and changing perspectives are surprisingly powerful in this muted, thoughtful novel of second chances. (July)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

On a day like any other, Andreas changes his life. When a routine doctor's visit leads to an unexpected prognosis, a great yearning takes hold of him-but who can tell if it is homesickness or wanderlust; a deathwish or a fresh lease on life? Andreas leaves everything behind-sells his Paris apartment, cuts off all social ties, quits his teaching job, and waves good-bye to his days spent idly sitting in cafes-to look for a woman he loved half a lifetime ago. The monotony of days had been keeping him in check; now he hopes for a miracle and for a new beginning.

Andreas's travels lead him back to the province of his youth, back to his hometown in Switzerland where he returns to familiar streets, where his brother still lives in their childhood home, and where Fabienne, a woman he was obsessed with in his youth, continues to visit the same lake they once swam in together. Andreas, consumed with longing for his lost love and blinded by the uncertainty of his future, is tormented by the question of what might have been if things had happened differently.

Peter Stamm has been praised as a stylistic ascetic and his prose as distinguished by lapidary expression, telegraphic terseness, and finely tuned sensitivity (Bookforum). In On a Day Like This, Stamm's unobtrusive observational style allows us to journey with our antihero through his crises of banality, of living in his empty world, to the realization that life is finite-that one must live it, as long as that is possible.