Jürg Schubiger

Als der Tod zu uns kam

In their picture book, Jürg Schubiger and Rotraut Susanne Berner tell of a place and a time when death was not yet known. Not even his name.

"Death? Never heard of it. There was no last hour then, there was only a first, second, third, thousandth... always one more. Hour, hour, as far as we could see." Everything that existed remained beautiful and whole. But then one day – like a stranger passing through – death comes to the village, or rather: he stumbles in, because he is clumsy. So clumsy that the children have to laugh at him. So clumsy that he burns the house down while smoking on the haystack that night. When he weeps the next morning, holding the dead child, who had been hit by a beam, on his knees and desperately accusing himself: "What I did there again", death is a heap of misery.

Jürg Schubiger's finely spun text and Rotraut Susanne Berner's clear, clever pictures show in an ingenious and touching way how suffering not only comes into this picture book and into the world with death, but also pity, affection and consolation.

Price in antiquarian bookshops for Edition-115 € 25.00

ISBN 9783779503125

Peter Hammer Verlag

Autographed copy