About the book: 2017 / Klaus Hoffer (b. 1942) - Austrian writer, German philologist, translator. Author of prose and essay collections “On the Magnetic Mountain” (1982), “Inhabitants of the Empty” (1991), “The Proximity of the Stranger” (2008). Winner of the award named after. A. Döblin. K. Hoffer’s only novel “At the Bireshes” (1979/1983) takes the reader into the world of habitation of an ancient clan-tribe called “Bireshes”. Here, at the “end of the earth” (on the remote outskirts of Austria), the main character arrives to fulfill a long-bequeathed ancestral ritual - to live in the Village for a year, renouncing his own “I” and taking on the role and responsibilities of a deceased relative. The narration about the customs and forms of life of this place, as if out of time, about its myths is carried out by outstanding bireshi, whose bizarre attempts to “explain the world,” themselves and their own history are permeated with abundant intertextual motifs of world literature. Some pages of this hypnotic phantasmagoria will probably remind the reader works of Kafka and Canetti.