A man and a woman meet in a park. The man has a story to share, one of a past relationship that contains echoes, similarities to the woman's life too remarkable to be considered just a coincidence. And so the lines of reality begin to blur. Is the man a warning from the future? Is the woman destined to repeat the same mistakes? Who really exists? Is there such thing as fate?

Gillian seems to have it all - she is beautiful, successful, and securely married. But one night, after an argument with her husband, their car crashes on a wet road, and everything is lost. When she wakes in the hospital, she is a widow with a ruined face and no way back to the person she thought she was. It is only when she begins to piece together the painful shards of her present existence and revisit a relationship from her past that she is able to glimpse the freedom that might come with her loss. From the master of unadorned storytelling, All Days Are Night is a quietly disquieting exploration of identity, inside and out.

After returning from a pleasant holiday with his wife, Astrid, and their two children, Thomas walks out the front door. Thomas walks up the street. Thomas keeps walking. Astrid gradually realizes that her husband has not just gotten up early to go to work. She waits for as long as she can and then puts as much energy as she can into trying to find him - coming to understand, along the way, that there is little she can do if Thomas is striving to stay lost. In precise and hypnotic prose that cuts as cleanly as a scalpel, To the Back of Beyond is a novel that takes away the safe foundations of a marriage and a lifestyle to ask deeper questions about identity, connection and how free we are to change our lives. It is a graceful and resonant work from one of Europe's most important writers.

Alex has spent the majority of his adult life between two very different women--and he can't make up his mind. Sonia, his wife and business partner, is everything a man would want. Intelligent, gorgeous, charming, and ambitious, she worked tirelessly alongside him to open their architecture firm and to build a life of luxury. But when the seven-year itch sets in, their exhaustion at working long hours coupled with their failed attempts at starting a family get the best of them. Alex soon finds himself kindling an affair with his college lover, Ivona. The young Polish woman who worked in a Catholic mission is the polar opposite of Sonia: dull, passive, taciturn, and plain. Despite having little in common with Ivona, Alex is inexplicably drawn to her while despising himself for it. Torn between his highbrow marriage and his lowbrow affair, Alex is stuck within a spiraling threesome. But when Ivona becomes pregnant, life takes an unexpected turn, and Alex is puzzled more than ever by the mysteries of his heart.
Peter Stamm, one of Switzerland's most acclaimed writers, is at his best exploring the complexities of human relationships. "Seven Years "is a distinct, sobering, and bold novel about the impositions of happiness in the quest for love.

A new novel of artful understatement about mortality, estrangement, and the absurdity of life from the acclaimed author of "Unformed Landscape" and "In Strange Gardens"
On a day like any other, Andreas changes his life. When a routine doctor's visit leads to an unexpected prognosis, a great yearning takes hold of him--but who can tell if it is homesickness or wanderlust? Andreas leaves everything behind, sells his Paris apartment; cuts off all social ties; quits his teaching job; and waves goodbye to his days spent idly sitting in cafes--to look for a woman he once loved, half a lifetime ago. The monotony of days has been keeping him in check; now he hopes for a miracle and for a new beginning.
Andreas' travels lead him back to the province of his youth, back to his hometown in Switzerland where he returns to familiar streets, where his brother still lives in their childhood home, and where Fabienne, a woman he was obsessed with in his youth, visits the same lake they once swam in together. Andreas, still consumed with longing for his lost love and blinded by the uncertainty of his future, is tormented by the question of what might have been if things had happened differently.
Peter Stamm has been praised as a "stylistic ascetic" and his prose as "distinguished by lapidary expression, telegraphic terseness, and finely tuned sensitivity" (Bookforum). In "On a Day Like This," Stamm's unobtrusive observational style allows us to journey with our antihero through his crises of banality, of living in his empty world, and the realization that life is finite--that one must live it, as long as that is possible.
Praise for Unformed Landscape:
"Sensitive and unnerving. . . . An uncommonly intimate work, one that will remind the reader of his or her own lived experience with a greater intensity than many of the books that are published right here at home." --The New Republic Online
"If Albert Camus had lived in an age when people in remote Norwegian fishing villages had e-mail, he might have written a novel like this."--The New Yorker
"Unformed Landscape has a refreshing purity, a lack of delusion, a lack of hype."--Los Angeles Times

With the precision of a surgeon, Peter Stamm cuts to the heart of the fragile and revealing moments of everyday life.
They are bankers, students, mothers, or retirees. They live in New York City or somewhere in Switzerland, they work in London or Riga, they cross paths in a Fado bar in Lisbon. They breathe the banal routine of daily life. It is to these ordinary people that Peter Stamm grants center stage in his latest collection of short stories. Henry, a cowherd turned stuntman, crisscrosses the country, dreaming of meeting a woman. Inger, the Dane, refuses her skimpy life and takes off for Italy. Regina, so lonely in her big house since her children left and her husband passed away, discovers the world anew thanks to the Australian friend of her granddaughter, who helps Regina envision her next voyage.
In these stories, Stamm's clean style expresses despair without flash, through softness and small gestures, with disarming retorts full of derision and infinite tenderness. There, where life hesitates, ready to tip over--with nothing yet played out--is where these people and their stories exist. For us, they all become exceptional. Praise for "Unformed Landscape" "Sensitive and unnerving. . . . An uncommonly intimate work, one that will remind the reader of his or her own lived experience with a greater intensity than many of the books that are published right here at home." "--The New Republic Online"

"Unformed Landscape" begins in a small village on a fjord in the Finnmark, on the northeastern coast of Norway, where the borders between Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia lie covered in snow and darkness, where the real borders are between day and night, summer and winter, and between people. Here, a sensitive young woman like Kathrine finds few outlets for her desires. Half Norwegian, half Sami (an indigenous people), Kathrine works for the customs office inspecting the fishing boats arriving regularly in the harbor. She is in her late 20s, has a son from an early marriage, and has drifted into a second loveless marriage to a man whose cold and dominating conventionality forms a bold stroke through the unformed landscape of her life. After she makes a discovery about her husband that deeply wounds her, Kathrine cuts loose from her moorings and her confusion and sets off in search of herself.
Her journey begins aboard a ship headed south, taking her below the Arctic Circle for the first time in her life. Kathrine makes her way to France and has the bittersweet experience of a love affair that flares and dies quickly, her starved senses rewarded by the shimmering beauty of Paris. Through a series of poignant encounters, Kathrine is led to the richer life she was meant to have and is brave enough to claim.
Using simple words strung together in a melodic alphabet, Peter Stamm introduces us, through a series of intimate sketches, to the heart of an unforgettable woman. Her story speaks eloquently about solitude, the fragility of love, lost illusions, and self-discovery.

The stories here possess all the qualities that have built Peter Stamm's reputation as one of the very finest European writers alive today - the undemonstrative prose, the deceptive simplicity of the storylines, and the calm, clear understanding of psychology and the emotions. In 'Expectations', we meet a woman who becomes involved with her younger upstairs neighbour; in 'The Result', a man waiting for the outcome of medical tests; and in 'Sweet Dreams', a young couple learning to navigate the thrills and complications of cohabitation. A master of the short story, Stamm does not spare the reader's feelings - and nor does he waste a word.

Un pueblo noruego al norte del crculo polar. Aqu, en los confines del mundo, vive Kathrine, empleada en la aduana. Tiene veintiocho aos y un hijo de su primer matrimonio. Da tras da controla los barcos de pesca que llegan al puerto. Slo se rompe esta oscura monotona en los das de abril, cuando por fin el sol esparce de nuevo su luz difusa sobre el vasto paisaje nevado.

Diplomarbeit aus dem Jahr 1996 im Fachbereich VWL - Makrookonomie, allgemein, Note: 2,0, Universitat zu Koln (Unbekannt), Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Inhaltsangabe: Zusammenfassung: Schon sehr lange ist die Freistellung des Existenzminimums von der Einkommensteuer gefordert worden, doch es bedurfte einer Entscheidung des Bundesverfassungsgerichts, um diese Forderung gesetzlich umzusetzen. In der vorliegenden Diplomarbeit werden dazu verschiedene Aspekte betrachtet: Zum einen wird der 1996 in Kraft getretene Einkommensteuertarif mit seinem Vorgangertarif aus dem Jahre 1990 verglichen und im Hinblick auf Verteilungswirkungen analysiert. Zum anderen werden drei grundsatzlich mogliche Freistellungsmethoden vorgestellt und verglichen. Dabei konnen in der Literatur und der politischen Diskussion weit verbreitete Missverstandnisse uber die Belastungswirkungen von Nullzonentarifen und Grundfreibetragen ausgeraumt werden. Es wird gezeigt, dass mit allen drei Freistellungsmethoden in statischer Sicht die gleiche Steuerlastverteilung erzielt werden kann. Es werden aber auch Unterschiede in dynamischer Betrachtungsweise aufgezeigt, die eine Freistellung des Existenzminimums mittels eines Freibetrages vorteilhaft erscheinen lassen. Im Rahmen dieser Diplomarbeit werden weiterhin die Grundzuge und Prinzipien der deutschen Einkommensteuer dargelegt sowie Methoden der Tarifanalyse vorgestellt und angewandt. Inhaltsverzeichnis: Inhaltsverzeichnis: TabellenverzeichnisII AbbildungsverzeichnisIII Abkurzungs- und SymbolverzeichnisV 1.Einleitung1 2.Schutz des Existenzminimums3 2.1Begriff "Existenzminimum"3 2.2Hohe des steuerlichen Existenzminimums4 2.2.1Grundzuge der Sozialhilfe.5 2.2.2Ermittlung aus Sozialleistungsdaten7 2.2.3Spielraum bei der Festlegung9 3.Grundzuge der deutschen Einkommensteuer11 3.1Besteuerungsprinzipien11 3.1.1Aquivalenzprinzip12 3.1.2Leistungsfahigkeitsprinzip13 3.2Ermittlung der Steuerbemessungsgrundlage zur Schaffung horizontaler Gerechtigkeit13 3.2.1Einkommen od