Peter Bichsel

Peter Bichsel (; 24 March 193515 March 2025) was a Swiss writer and journalist representing modern German literature. He was a member of the Group 47. His breakthrough was the collection of short stories And Really Frau Blum Would Very Much Like to Meet the Milkman.

Life and career Bichsel was born in Lucerne on 24 March 1935, the son of manual labourers. a member of the Swiss Federal Council. Between 1972 and 1989, he made his mark as a "writer in residence" and a guest lecturer at American universities.

One of his first and best-known works is And Really Frau Blum Would Very Much Like to Meet the Milkman. Published only in a modest edition in 1964, the book was quickly sold out. Both books were translated from German by the English poet Michael Hamburger. A theme of Bichsel's works for younger readers is the stubborn desire of children to take words literally and wreak havoc on the world of communicated ideas. In the early 1970s and 1980s, Bichsel's journalistic work pushed his literary work mainly into the background. and Warten in Baden-Baden appeared again with the Bichsel style that was so familiar to German readers. Peter Bichsel gave up being a professional teacher early in his lifetime, later he continued to teach his readers that the drudgery and banality of life are of our own making. He used often a simple sentence structure 'subject-predicate-object' and was a passionate observer of Switzerland. He was a founding member of the Gruppe Olten and member of the Group 47.

In 1981, he was a member of the jury at the 31st Berlin International Film Festival.

Peter Bichsel's estate was archived in the Swiss Literary Archives in Bern.

Bichsel died in Zuchwil on 15 March 2025, at the age of 89.

Awards

1965 Prize of "Group 47" 1970 Deutscher Jugendbuchpreis 1996 Mainzer Stadtschreiber 1999 Gottfried-Keller-Preis

To the City of Paris . Translated by Michael Kuttner. Kolkata: Tarjama (2007).