Literature Sophie Hunger lets her music resonate in her debut novel
Friendship, growing up, letting go - and music that holds it all together: That's what Swiss musician Sophie Hunger's debut novel is about. "Waltz for Nobody" is a wonderful story full of undertones.
13.03.2025, 06:31
SDA
Who is this friend of the first-person narrator, called Niemand? As the children of military attachés who often have to move, they don't have much that is stable: just themselves and their parents' record collection. The two find a home and answers in music, while the world outside remains a mystery to them. Together they listen to whale songs, the voices of Nina Simone or Tracy Chapman. "We were at home where the record collection was", is the opening line of the novel.
While the first-person narrator's friendship with Niemand is symbiotic in childhood, it begins to crack in adolescence. These cracks become bigger when the first-person narrator leaves the shared cocoon and takes her first steps as a musician. Nobody finally disappears painfully from the narrator's life in 2008 - the very year in which the author and musician Sophie Hunger released her debut album "Monday's Ghost".
How much of this narrative actually has to do with Sophie Hunger as a private person gradually becomes unimportant. More important is the connection to the musician Hunger, because it is omnipresent - in the chapter headings, which are often song titles, even the book title is a song from the album "Monday's Ghost". The music is also omnipresent in the language: rhythmic, sonorous, no word interrupts the flow. As in her songs, Hunger also likes to draw on images in her novel, writing associatively and taking detours.
So who is this nobody? Perhaps a person who resists the social pressure to become someone and instead prefers to disappear completely. But perhaps Niemand is also a facet of the first-person narrator herself. A part of her that she had to shed in order to find herself as a musician. In any case, "Walzer für Niemand" is about letting go, about saying goodbye - and it does so in a touching and melodious way.*
*This text by Maria Künzli, Keystone-SDA, was realized with the help of the Gottlieb and Hans Vogt Foundation.
