The son of a master butcher, the Bernese writer has fled a destiny all traced. On the occasion of the reissue of “La Vache”, his flagship work, he evokes his atypical career and his attachment to languages
On the road from Bern to his village in Spain, Beat Sterchi makes a stop on the heights of Lausanne. The second life of The Cow, his great novel reissued by Zoe Editions, earned him an international media attention that surprises him, touches him and embarrasses him. Less than the first time, in 1983, when the success of Bloch submerged him to the point of fleeing south to this Catalan village where he still spends much of his time. In 1987 appeared the beautiful translation of Gilbert Musy. More than thirty years have passed. The questions relating to foreigners, ecology, the fate of animals have given new relevance to this epic of a Spanish agricultural worker transplanted in Em-mental, between barn and slaughterhouse, at the turn of the industrialization of meat production.
In his seventies, Beat Sterchi has reached a certain serenity in the face of the success that had overwhelmed him at the time. Surprised that one is interested in him, he lends himself gently to the questions, after a radio show, sitting at a concrete terrace, facing the metro. He will content himself with a mineral water, because the road is still long until the Spanish kitchen garden which he will take care of until September, leaving in Bern a companion.
