Displacement in the rock

Every morning she fires up the oven, stirs the dough, puts the loaves in the oven - and surprises the whole village and herself. Alois' farm in the same neighbourhood. A farm that has been in the family for generations, Alois was not asked if he wanted to take it over. He lives with the dog, ignores the expectation of starting a family - but something is tightening. Perhaps it has something to do with Camenzind. Meanwhile, a young woman returns to the village; the three steps to the bakery run themselves. She fetches the key to the summer house from her grandparents; it is to be sold. She sees everything again, the mountain ridge, the valley, the balcony with the drawbridge. Soon, it seems to her, the house begins to speak to her.

The novel follows three characters who know nothing about each other and yet are connected - through the area, the village and the pressing question of how things should actually continue. They are stubbornly haunted by far-reaching traces of the past, but then something starts to move. In her linguistically dense debut, Mariann Bühler observes how change finds its way and shifts happen that were never intended, sometimes even moving mountains.