Born in Switzerland, Christoph Keller is a novelist, memoirist and editor. His books include the bestselling 2003 memoir-novel Der beste T nzer (The Best Dancer) and 2019's Der Boden unter den F en (The Ground Beneath Our Feet; winner of the Alemannic Literature Prize). Based for many years in New York City, he now lives in St Gallen.
Fascinating ... [The book is] a series of snapshots, anecdotes, poems and short stories about what it is to be disabled in a world that isn't very interested in accommodating disability. This isn't an angry book, it's a very funny one ... compelling and unsettling. The tension between Keller's intellect and his physical weakness courses through the writing ...Yet his gripe is not with his own physical limitations ... Keller is asking us to consider whether it is disability that is the problem, or whether it is a society that insists on seeing people with disabilities that way -- Rosie Kinchen * The Sunday Times * A defiant call to arms ... angry and funny in equal measure ... [Keller's life story is] enough to move any reader to remove dust from their proverbial eye ... moving ... Every Cripple a Superhero lingers long in the memory after its final page -- Craig Campbell * Morning Star * A skilful act of literary witness, sharp, moving and funny -- Joanne Limburg, author of Letters to My Weird Sisters What is it like to have a 'wasting' disease? In Every Cripple a Superhero, the excellence of Christoph Keller's writing is matched by its fearlessness. Precision, tragicomedy, quiet rage, elegant storytelling; every awkwardness, every frustration, every terror, every abjection is illuminated by the superpower of his style. No word or phrase is wasted in this marvellous book. And by the way, it is also a love story -- Alicia Ostriker, New York State Poet Laureate 2018-2021 and author of The Volcano and After: Selected and New Poems 2002-2019 An eye-opener regarding the everyday obstacles the author has to overcome when negotiating his local environment. The passage describing the absurd, insulting, and tragi-comic experience of visiting an award-winning new building and finding the only way to enter by wheelchair is via a remote corner of the building should be compulsory reading for anyone aiming to design inclusive spaces -- Laura Vaughan, Professor of Urban Form and Society, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London Shocking ... Keller's humor is quiet and sophisticated, melancholic and sarcastic, wide awake and always open to the unexpectedly beautiful ... [his] book has a lightness that brings tears to your eyes * Kulturzeitschrift * Everyone who doesn't use a wheelchair, and everyone who does, should read Christoph Keller's Every Cripple A Superhero. So many worlds exist side-by-side, yet we seldom truly enter the experience of another. Grace, strength, and humor are superpowers of extraordinary depth and stature, and Keller's slender, powerful book glows like a supernova -- Jayne Anne Phillips, author of Quiet Dell and Lark and Termite Explosive and moving, the book also has a real capacity to open the eyes of readers and to change attitudes * Procap Magazine * Christoph Keller ... ranks among the great Swiss writers * Neue Zürcher Zeitung *