Cavrein

What are the mountains? A mountain valley? What is a mountain with its slopes, its rocks, scree slopes, mountain noses, gorges, and corners? Leo Tuor tells the story of a hunter and his companions failing in the rugged landscape of Cavrein. In the damp, small hut with the smoking stove, they stow away their two-week provisions, set off in the darkness of the morning, climb over alpine pastures and swamps, lie chewing on fat in the rocks, spy on the mountain slopes with binoculars, sneak over scree slopes and rock bands, stumble over the ruins of the hut from which Placidus Spescha attempted the Tödi or perhaps better the Piz Russein, over Tutenchamon and the monastery of Disentis, over reminiscences of a comprehensive reading about mountains, animals, death, and literature from Pliny to Wittgenstein, from Dante to Malaparte. And about Raskolnikov. Because "whether a literature is worthwhile or not can be recognized by the fact that one encounters its characters again in life.".