In 1965 the unpretentious and soft-spoken Swiss school teacher Peter Bichsel was catapulted to public attention when he received the coveted prize of the Gruppe (Group) 47 at its meeting in Berlin. He was thus honored for a chapter in his then-unpublished novel Die Jahreszeiten (The Seasons, 1967) and for his poetic prose miniatures published in 1964 in the slim volume with the curious title Eigentlich möchte Frau Blum den Milchmann kennenlernen (translated as And Really Frau Blum Would Very Much Like to Meet the Milkman, 1968). At a time when highly intellectualized writings and linguistic experiments were in vogue, Bichsel's charming and seemingly naive vignettes, whose most notable attribute was their utmost economy of expression, delighted the critics. The subsequent success and continuing popularity of this author (sometimes referred to as "the poet of the commonplace") in Switzerland and abroad are astonishing indeed, since for years they were based primarily...