Trafika Europe 11 - Swiss Delights

TRAFIKA EUROPE 11 - SWISS DELIGHTS Editors’Welcome Contemporary Swiss writing is a kaleidoscope of languages and genres.With four official languages— German, French, Italian and Romansch—numerous dialects, established literary traditions in the three dominant languages, a strong oral tradition in Romansch and a vibrant spoken word scene in every corner of the country, not to mention a rising number of first and second generation immigrants writing in French or German as a second language, Switzerland boasts an astonishingly diverse literary ecosphere. It is impossible to offer anything but a cursory overview of Switzerland’s literary landscape in a single issue, but we hope to entice you to discover some of the most intriguing voices writing in the country today. We’ve concentrated on writers whose work has not yet been translated into English or only minimally so and have tried to reflect the country’s linguistic diversity with our selection of writers in all four of Switzerland’s national languages. These writers also span a wide range of

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