Literature/Music Two musicians publish their first novel
Bernese singer-songwriter Sophie Hunger has written her first novel. Her music is omnipresent in "Walzer für Niemand": in the story about friendship and letting go, but also in the title and chapter headings. (archive picture)
Image: Keystone
The double bass player Lia Maria Neff has made a name for herself with her band ''Caspar von Nebenan'' and as a singer-songwriter under the name ''Follia''. Like her colleague Sophie Hunger recently, she is also publishing her debut novel. ''A little bit forever'' is the title of the book.
Image: Keystone
Bernese singer-songwriter Sophie Hunger has written her first novel. Her music is omnipresent in "Walzer für Niemand": in the story about friendship and letting go, but also in the title and chapter headings. (archive picture)
Image: Keystone
The double bass player Lia Maria Neff has made a name for herself with her band ''Caspar von Nebenan'' and as a singer-songwriter under the name ''Follia''. Like her colleague Sophie Hunger recently, she is also publishing her debut novel. ''A little bit forever'' is the title of the book.
Image: Keystone
The well-known Bernese singer-songwriter Sophie Hunger has written her first novel, as has the Zurich-based double bass player Lia Maria Neff. Music plays a role in both - albeit in very different ways.
20.03.2025, 11:33
SDA
On the one hand, a friendship that leaves the world protectively outside, and on the other, a past love that still lingers. The debut novels by musicians Sophie Hunger and Lia Maria Neff deal with existential themes.
And in both books, which were published just a week apart, the musicality of their authors shines through: In Sophie Hunger's "Waltz for Nobody", music is what holds everything together. It is existential for the first-person narrator. She experiences real life through music, while reality seems like a dream to her.
In Lia Maria Neff's "A little bit forever", music is less central. But Neff's musical solo project "Follia" was "actually created in collaboration with Sophie Hunger", she tells the Keystone-SDA news agency. The double bassist Neff attended a master class with Hunger. In her novel, the protagonist and first-person narrator studies double bass like her author. When she talks about music, however, it is in a rather sober, analytical tone. For her, life takes place outside of music.
Both texts are structured by insertions: Lia Maria Neff plays with unsent text messages to her ex-boyfriend Zeno, while Sophie Hunger's novel is interspersed with drawn female bodies and short, partly fictional essays on the history of the Walser, the ethnic group that settled in high alpine regions from the Valais from the 13th century onwards.
Friendship and growing up
Both novels are about friendship and growing up. In "Waltz for Nobody", the first-person narrator can only find her place in the world if she breaks out of the cocoon of friendship with the ominous nobody. For Neff in "Ein bisschen für immer", growing up goes hand in hand with the realization that you don't have to completely let go of your first great love in order to start something new. That a little love can stay.
Naturally, 42-year-old Hunger has a different view of growing up than 25-year-old Lia Maria Neff. Sophie Hunger writes maturely, looking back and beyond herself, while Neff is still in the middle of it and writes within her own present. This automatically results in a different altitude, which makes "Waltz for Nobody" more complex and profound.
Sophie Hunger: "Waltz for Nobody"
Friendship, growing up, letting go - and music that holds everything together: That's what Swiss musician Sophie Hunger's debut novel is about. "Waltz for Nobody" is a wonderful story full of undertones.
Who is this friend of the first-person narrator, called Niemand? As the children of military attachés who often have to move house, they don't have much in the way of permanence: 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".
Book title is a song
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, "Waltz for Nobody" is about letting go, about saying goodbye - and it does so touchingly and sonorously.
Lia Maria Neff: "A little bit forever"
What happens to the first love when the second is just around the corner? This is the question posed by Zurich author Lia Maria Neff in her novel "Ein bisschen für immer". A successful debut about growing up, friendship and the different faces of love.
A bit of New Romance, only more melancholy: Lia Maria Neff's debut novel takes the reader on a journey of inner ups and downs. The first-person narrator Una, a double bass student like the author herself, has just fallen in love with Aurel. Everything could be fine if it weren't for her ex-boyfriend Zeno, who suddenly gets in touch again.
His innocuous question as to whether they would like to have a beer together again triggers a wave of doubts and insecurities in Una. A kind of dialog begins with one and the other: Una addresses a you, her new love Aurel; at the same time, she turns to her ex-boyfriend Zeno with unsent text messages.
She fears that she will forget the time she spent with Zeno while starting over with Aurel. She is afraid of experiencing heartbreak again, of suffering once more. So she is torn between the present and the past. At the same time, there are Una's parents, who have a long but difficult and strained relationship. Una's father was also once caught between two women.
Clever reflection
Lia Maria Neff, who studies classical double bass at the Zurich University of the Arts, is also the singer and songwriter of the band Follia. She also succeeds in combining text and music in the novel: in the rhythmic, pictorial language, in the deliberate repetition of individual thoughts. However, it is precisely this love of storytelling and repetition that sometimes slows down the flow of reading.
Nevertheless, "A little bit forever" is a clever reflection on growing up, love and friendship. In Una's emotional chaos, her friend Emma is the constant: "When I'm with Emma, it's always very calm. My skin is calm, my thoughts, my inner waves flatten out, it's calm around me. She lets me be. Always and in everything, no matter what I am, what I do, say or don't say, she lets me be. It is always calm, even when we are upset about the world. "*
*These texts by Maria Künzli, Keystone-SDA, were realized with the help of the Gottlieb and Hans Vogt Foundation.
