As the protagonist in Patrick Holzapfel’s debut novel Ermine on Benches walks through Vienna’s ninth district, something almost unheard of happens: he strays from the straight path, begins to follow the meandering steps of a homeless man wrapped in ermine and finally finds himself abruptly – on a park bench made of twenty thin brown wooden boards. From here, where time finally seems to stop for him, an alternative map of the city gradually unfolds, which the narrator explores sitting down, because: ‘The longer you sit, the more you learn about the bench. And at the same time, you also learn something about people who sit on benches’; people like Manuela with her extensive, albeit completely useless, knowledge of film history, like Yong, who rants about his countless chess triumphs, or just like the narrator, who in his search for the ermine king becomes a king himself with quiet wit and irony and realises that every bench tells the story of a person and transforms their passions, fears and hopes into a view.
Patrick Holzapfel, born in Augsburg, lives in Austria. He works as a writer, film critic and freelance curator. Ermine on Benches is his first book.
“Pleasantly, the novel itself makes no claim about the extent to which he wants to change the world politically. He does nothing other than tell of a certain situation in life. About a person who has to answer the existential question 'Where do I go from here?' has a somewhat unusual, but actually obvious answer: Sit down first!” – taz
