Meet the writer: Arno Geiger

Arno Geiger won the prestigious Deutscher Buchpreis and the Friedrich‑Hölderlin‑Preis in 2005 for his novel We Are Doing Fine [Es geht uns gut]. In his latest book Beneath Drachenwand Mountain [Unter der Drachenwand], Geiger tells the tale of Veit Kolbe, a soldier who meets two women in the mountain village of Mondsee, beneath the steep Drachenwand mountain, while on leave in 1944. It's a striking novel about the power of stories, about those who died and those who survived, and about love and hope in troubled times.

Arno Geiger (born in 1968 in Bregenz) lives in Vienna and in the Austrian village of Wolfurt. He studied German philology, ancient history and literary theory at the universities of Vienna and Innsbruck. His novel The Old King in his Exile [Der alte König in seinem Exil] won the German Hospiz‑ und Palliativ‑Verbandes (DHPV) award and the Die zweite Realität award from the Swiss Sonnweid foundation.

Arno Geiger will have a conversation with the writer Geert van Istendael.