Almost Like Spring

Alex Capus tells the true story of Switzerland's most notorious bank robbers, Kurt Sandweg and Waldemar Velte. As the Great Depression tightens its grip, and Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow gain notoriety in Texas, a series of bank robberies make headlines in Switzerland. The prime suspects are two young men, who steal small sums of money from city banks, and are unafraid to use force when faced with capture.

Meanwhile, a shop assistant in Basel encounters two mysterious yet charismatic men from Wuppertal, with a seemingly insatiable love for jazz; day after day they come to see her, and soon the shop assistant begins to form a romantic attachment to one of the men—though she is not permitted to know her friend's real name.

Capus paints an honest and moving portrait of 1930s Switzerland � the bleak rituals of Nazism are taking shape and permeate Swiss as well as German society, and the two unemployed youths' dreams of escape to a new life become increasingly corrupted as the bank raids take a violent turn. Yet the humanity of their relationships is juxtaposed against the cruelty of their crimes, and Capus's subtle prose leaves the reader to distinguish the sacred from the profane.

Alex Capus was born in 1961 and has published numerous works, including novels, collections of short stories, essays, and historical accounts, as well as translations into German of A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole and three novels by the John Fante.