The Gilded Chalet cover

 

The cover shows the Grand Hotel Belvedere in Davos from a 1905 poster by Hans Eggimann (1872 - 1929), a Bernese painter and illustrator who studied at Dresden and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He committed suicide by throwing himself off the Kirchenfeld bridge in Berne.

 

 

My new book on Switzerland comes out in November from Nicholas Brealey

 

In the summer of 1816 paparazzi trained their telescopes across Lake Geneva on poets Byron and Shelley - and their womenfolk. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Byron penned The Prisoner of Chillon. Together they put little Switzerland on the literary map.

"With a sharp eye for detail and a historian's capacious knowledge, Padraig Rooney has written a superbly amusing guide to all the writers who've been drawn to or emerged from Switzerland. This is a book that should be stuffed into every stocking--the perfect Christmas gift!"

EDMUND WHITE

author of The Flaneur

"A fascinating look behind the scenery at how Switzerland has influenced and affected some of the greatest authors and some of my favourite books."

DICCON BEWES

author of Slow Train to Switzerland

"There is a mastery in the handling of the prose-rhythms which I find exciting ... It is in order for an ageing writer, in a valediction to Irish readers, to essay a prophesy about Irish letters. Rooney will be a credit to them."

ANTHONY BURGESS

author of A Clockwork Orange

Order online or at your local bookshop: Worldwide: Book Depository

UK: Amazon  Germany: Amazon Switzerland: Lehmanns, Thalia, Orell Füssli

 

 

 

 


site visit counter