Author Nominee: Switzerland

Jürg Schubiger
Switzerland, Author

Fairy tales have a happy ending, paradise stories have a happy beginning. So I'll just start all over again.

- Jürg Schubiger

Jürg Schubiger was born in 1936 in Zürich. After working in different fields - cardboard packaging, gardening, bricklaying - Schubiger completed his A-levels. Various stays abroad in the south of France, Corsica and the south of Spain followed, but he found himself increasingly drawn to the Ticino area of Switzerland where he still goes when he is writing. He completed his PhD at the Zürich University (in German, psychology and philosophy), and from 1969 to 1979 he worked as a publisher in his father's educational publishing house. Now Schubiger and his wife run a psychotherapeutic practice in Zürich. However, the author separates this professional activity very clearly from his work as a writer by dedicating himself to the latter during his regular extended stays in the Ticino.

According to Elisabeth Stuck and Christine Lötscher, Schubiger is the philosopher among Swiss authors of children's books. However, they go on to say that he is not a philosopher who expounds and instructs, but is one rather like Socrates, who encourages his readers, young and old, to deliberate over what it is that lies behind the naturalness of appearances in the truest sense of the word, and 'to ponder even the most unpreposessing things'. The demands he makes on his readers are, however, tempered by a sense of humour and a lightness in his writing style which makes even very serious subject matter approachable and puts it within the grasp of children. He writes across several genres, ranging from family stories, convincingly depicting intergenerational relationships, to recreations of traditional stories. In particular his Die Geschichte von Wilhelm Tell has been praised for his sympathetic approach to the relationships between father and son and between grandfather and grandson in this adaptation of a favourite Swiss story.

Schubiger's books have been translated into various languages and have won a number of significant awards.