Blackboard (+SVIZRA 6)

Book 6 of Strangers Press' chapbook series, +SVIZRA.

With this collection of short vignettes translated from Romansh, Switzerland’s smallest official language, Romana Ganzoni takes us on an educational journey through the Engadin Valley. 

Drifting from past to present, personal to political, local to global, Ganzoni explores the resilience of tradition in the face of the new, cosmopolitan world. Her language is rich and spontaneous as she plays creatively between lines of fact and fiction in her exploration of life and society in a unique and mountainous corner of Switzerland.

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+SVIZRA is a series of eight playfully designed chapbooks published as an exciting showcase of contemporary writing from the four official languages of Switzerland: German, French, Italian and Romansh. It takes its name from the Romansh name for ‘Switzerland’ and is the result of our latest collaboration with an international group of authors, translators, publishers, designers and editors.

In publishing them, along with other sets on the way, we are continuing our mission to broaden the appreciation and breadth in the UK of contemporary European writing in particular and international literature in general against a still rising political tide of mutual suspicion, intolerance and aggression.

In giving equal visibility and weight to each of the four languages, +SVIZRA offers a range of Swiss writing never before seen in English from a diverse group of some of the best authors living and working in Switzerland today, including National Literature Prize winning Anna Ruchat, Iraqi exile Usama Al-Shahmani, and Romansh author, Rut Plouda.