Free Maybe This Time by Alois Hotschnig Page B

do anything other than sleep, regardless of whose dreams he would have to dream. He did not want to wake up. But he did wake up and get up, which he in fact wanted to do since there were things he had planned, even though they were thwarted by the very first encounter of the day.
    By now, he also felt at home at other addresses, and what at first had seemed to happen by chance was now routine.
    He entered a building to visit someone, but was stopped by a man who took him for a neighbour and held the lift for him. He got out one floor above the man and went to the flat where someone was meant to be waiting for him, but no one was home. He put the key in the lock, the door opened, and he realized that this flat, too, belonged to him.
    After glancing around, he left the building and went along the streets, peering into windows. When he saw windows that were dark, he went into the building and hid in the flat for a while, which then became his flat.
    He didn’t return to his own flat for a long time after that night. He moved to new areas, towns and cities, and his key fitted the lock of any door he wished to open. Yet he wanted to return to the place where it all began, to be closer to his own history. At least that is what he thought, regardless of whose flat it might have been or whose life he had lived at the time, or was living now.
     
     
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    PEIRENE TITLE NO. 1
Beside the Sea by Véronique Olmi
translated from the French by Adriana Hunter
     
     
    “A mesmerising portrait … it should be read.” THE GUARDIAN
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    PEIRENE TITLE NO. 2
Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal
translated from the Catalan by Laura McGloughlin and Paul Mitchell
     
     
    “So vibrant, that it makes me want to take scissors to everything else I read.” THE GUARDIAN
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    PEIRENE TITLE NO. 3
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman
by Friedrich Christian Delius
translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch
     
     
    “This is a small masterpiece.” TLS
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    PEIRENE TITLE NO. 4
Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki
translated from the German by Anthea Bell
     
     
    “Inventive and deeply affecting, this remarkable fiction lingers in the mind long after the last page has been turned.” THE INDEPENDENT
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    PEIRENE TITLE NO. 5
Tomorrow Pamplona by Jan van Mersbergen
translated from the Dutch by Laura Watkinson
     
     
    “An impressive work from a leading Dutch writer.” DAILY MAIL
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    PEIRENE TITLE NO. 6
Maybe This Time by Alois Hotschnig
translated from the Austrian German by Tess Lewis
     
     
    “He is one of the best writers of his generation.”
SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG

     
     
    Out 2012
     
     
    PEIRENE TITLE NO. 7
The Brothers by Asko Sahlberg
translated from the Finnish by Emily and Fleur Jeremiah
     
     
    “Asko Sahlberg brings Shakespeare to the year 1809, and regal drama to a farmhouse. The comparison with Shakespeare might seem grandiose, but it’s justified.” HELSINGIN SANOMAT
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    PEIRENE TITLE NO. 8
The Murder of Halland by Pia Juul
translated from the Danish by Martin Aiken
     
     
    “Once in a while a book emerges that succeeds in turning a tradition inside out. Like when Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose made crime fiction seem like something learned and intellectual. Or right now, when Pia Juul’s The Murder of Halland makes the whole set of genre rules collapse.” DAGENS NYHETER
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    PEIRENE TITLE NO. 9
Sea of Ink by Richard Weihe
translated from the Swiss German by Tess Lewis
     
     
    “A powerful, poetic book. A two-hour enchantment.” KULTURSPIEGEL

 

About the Author
     
     
    AUTHOR
Alois Hotschnig, born in 1959, is one of Austria’s most critically acclaimed authors, eliciting comparison with Franz Kafka and Thomas Bernhard. He has written novels, short stories and plays. His books have won major Austrian and international honours, such as the Italo-Svevo award and the Erich-Fried prize. Maybe This Time was first