"The mother is dying, the son writes her memories off her chest in a race against death.
Wolf Haas' 'Eigentum' is an ironic play on language and at the same time a tender declaration of love." - Stefan Kuzmany, SPIEGEL
" 'Eigentum' is a poetic lecture in novel form, a narrative about death and language, a touching epitaph." - Richard Kämmerlings, Welt am Sonntag
"With 'Eigentum' Wolf Haas not only sets an unsentimental monument to his own mother, but also presents a book that explores the relationship between writing and life." - Katja Gasser, ORF ZiB
"Lovingly and tenderly - and despite many biographical disappointments with his typical humour [...] loving, but not kitschy [...] as an author the son breaks the heaviness with humour also for the reader." - Michael Wurmitzer, Standard
»Pierced by arrows of memories, we sit and sigh.«
Tender and full of grim humor, Wolf Haas tells the story of his mother’s life
Haas’s mother, almost ninety-five years old, is dying, but she tells her son that she feels fine. »It annoyed me to no end. My whole life long, Mum had painted a picture of how much she was suffering. Three days before she died, she announced that she was doing fine. There had to be a mistake.«
His mother experienced the meaning of property by losing everything. She was born in 1923, but »then inflation came and the money was gone.« As a child, she endured poverty, worked and saved every penny. But it was never even enough for her to buy even a single square metre.
Wolf Haas tells his mother’s desperate story with such loving, grim humour that it is simply unforgettable.