David Wroblewski
David Wroblewski was born in 1959 in suburban Milwaukee and grew up on a farm in a remote area of Wisconsin. While at school he won a state-wide literary prize for a short story about a pack of wolves. At Wisconsin University, he majored first in drama, playing minor roles in Peter Schaffer’s »Equus« and »West Side Story«, and eventually in computer science, the beginning of a nearly 30-year career of software research and development. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina.
His début novel »The Story of Edgar Sawtelle« (2008) is a combination of a family saga and coming of age tale. The protagonist is the mute, fourteen-year-old Edgar, who has grown up with his par – ents Gar and Trudy on a farm in Wisconsin near the Chequamegon National Forest. For generations, the Sawtelles have made a living raising and training a rare — and entirely fictional — breed of dog. Edgar seems poised to carry on his family’s traditions, but when catastrophe strikes, he finds his once-peaceful home engulfed in turmoil.
Forced to flee into the vast wilderness beyond the Sawtelle farm, Edgar comes of age in the wild, fighting for his survival and that of the three yearling dogs who accompany him, until the day he is forced to choose between leaving forever or returning home to confront the mysteries he has left unsolved.
David Wroblewski’s first book was selected for Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club and became a New York Times best-seller. The author lives with the writer Kimberly McClintock in Colorado.
© international literaturefestival berlin
Die Geschichte des
Edgar Sawtelle
DVA
München, 2009
[Ü: Barbara Heller,
Rudolf Hermstein]