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| Carlo Bernasconi | |
Carlo Bernasconi, longtime editor-in-chief of the Swiss book trade journal Schweizer Buchhandel, died in late October after battling cancer for several years. He was 64.
Carlo was editor-in-chief of Schweizer Buchhandel from 1998 until the end of 2014. Before that, for many years, he was Swiss correspondent for the Börsenblatt, the German book trade magazine. He was widely considered one of the most knowledgeable people about Swiss publishing, bookselling and authors. He was also an amazing chef, a restaurateur, an author of cookbooks and a novel, and a publisher. He had learned a lot about cooking, especially Italian cooking, from his mother, and had several restaurants in Zurich. The best-known was Cucina e Libri, which for a time stocked books as well as food. It was relatively small, usually open for dinner, and had dishes that featured food Carlo bought in markets during the day. His cookbooks included La Cucina Verde, which featured Italian vegetable recipes, and La Cucina Dolce, about Italian desserts.
I met Carlo for the first time in 2001, while I was on a tour for American editors of publishers in Germany and Switzerland, led by the German Book Office in New York. Carlo attended one of our dinners in Zurich and interviewed the participants for a story about our visit. He was the only book trade journalist to do so, and I was impressed by his enthusiasm, knowledge and sense of humor.
We not only kept in touch but became good friends, meeting regularly at the London Book Fair and the Frankfurt Book Fair. In London, we usually had lunch together, always off-site, since Carlo, ever the gourmet, was particular about his food. In Frankfurt, we had a standing dinner date, at the exceptional Erno's Bistro, for many hours, with multiple courses and a range of drinks. It was always great to catch up, share news about our families, talk about the book business, wonder about the state of the world. Carlo loved to joke and laugh, and it was a highlight of the fair for me.
Carlo also invited me along to events at Frankfurt that I might not normally hear about or be invited to. My favorite was in 2009, the year Herta Müller won the Nobel Prize and was nominated for the German Book Prize for her novel Atemschaukel (The Hunger Angel). Carlo got me into the German Book Prize ceremony, which coincidentally took place just days after the Nobel announcement. Müller didn't win a second prize in a week, but at an after-party, Carlo, who of course knew her well, as he did so many authors, talked with her and introduced me. So thanks to Carlo, I had a special conversation in German with a Nobel Prize winner!
Last October, just before the Frankfurt Book Fair, Carlo canceled his trip to the fair and our dinner because cancer had returned. I wrote him several times afterwards, but didn't learn until this week that he was gone. Ich vermisse Dich, Carlo. --John Mutter