The Day My Grandfather Was a Hero

This is a beautiful book, a masterpiece of brevity and depth. It’s rinsed in unspoken despair but what its characters never lose, despite their agonies, despite their trauma, is hope … Translated beautifully from the German by Jamie Bulloch, could be his best work yet … - New European

This tense novella builds to a final reckoning. Which facet of the human character will triumph

- bravery, evil, or a just a sad, deadening apathy? - The Times

Hochgatterer’s great art is to transform psychological confusion into a language of extreme clarity … This Austrian author writes with a sparseness that builds to a powerful crescendo before the dramatic finale. - Neue Zurcher Zeitung

Lean, incredibly vivid sentences … the tension never lets up - Die Welt

Austria’s answer to David Lynch - 3sat Kulturzeit

His novels unleash a force that is rarely felt in contemporary German-language literature - Die Presse

The final days have been reported, filmed, sung and documented a hundred times, but rarely told as vividly as in Paulus Hochgatterer’s new book … he narrates the last act of a drama in which life and future plans were reshuffled. This could be dismissed as hubris, were Hochgatterer not such a good writer. - Profil

His work conveys a heightened awareness of the fragility of what keeps our innermost souls in check - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung