The Hunger Tower

The Thurgau native Paul Ilg (1875-1957), an illegitimate son of a factory worker, had a varied life after a childhood as a foster child: he lived as an editor in Berlin, was the lover of a German noblewoman, and celebrated great success with his autofictional tetralogy "Das Menschlein Matthias," which he was never able to replicate afterwards. In the previously unpublished novel fragment "Der Hungerturm," Ilg resumes the autofictional writing that had brought him so much recognition in his early novels. Lucerne, late 1930s: Hans Anmatt, a Swiss painter, has returned to Switzerland with his son Peter and wife Hanna from Germany, living with other emigrants in the so-called Hunger Tower, the dilapidated Hotel Bristol. His joy in the familiar landscape is overshadowed by the realization of the pervasive Nazi ideology.