Arno Camenisch (born 1978, the bastard) is sometimes considered the great new hope for Romansh-language literature. Perhaps by default, as there is little competition – and he himself writes mostly in German. Nevertheless Sez Ner caused quite an impression when it came out, written in German and Romansh on facing pages; English readers can now get in on the action thanks to this translation (made, one assumes, from the German version) published as part of Dalkey's charmingly uncommercial Swiss Literature Series.

The scene is the little farming hamlet of Sez Ner on the slopes of the mountain of the same name, in Switzerland's rural Graubünden canton. The four main characters, unnamed, are a swineherd, a cowherd, a dairyman and his farmhand, and the action is told in standalone paragraphs that paint vivid micro-scenes of farming life:

The swineherd trips over a slab in the yard and lands on his belly in the shit. The full pails hurtle through the air and the milk spills across the yard, through the cow shit, into the cracks between the slabs. The milk turns brownish. His skinned knuckles sting, his chin, too. The swineherd wishes he could lie there until summer's over.

Or again:

The cold water in the morning breaks the skin on the herdsmen's hands. Hands like sandpaper. Creams ease it in the afternoon. Next morning, the cold breaks the skin again. The skin breaks at the knuckles first, then at the joints, on the palms. The herdsmen rub in milking grease, that doesn't help either. The only thing that helps any way at all is a stick of ointment, Tuc, 30g, with the screwcap covered in muck. The only thing that really helps is putting your hands in your pockets.

One more:

His great-grandmother had always said the valley was narrow and the oldest woman in the valley was jealousy. He relights his Rössli as it's gone out. His grandfather, though, said there was only one cure for jealousy and that was chopping wood. The only cure for jealousy was chopping wood.

Camenisch's descriptions are unclichéd and uncomplicated: ‘On the windowsill are geraniums, the height of microphones’ was a line I really admired. Also, ‘The bread's so hard, you could strike a chicken dead with it.’ At other times you are simply impressed by the unexpected details: farmers get drunk on gentian schnapps, and, as sun sets behind the Alps, we read, ‘The marmots whistle and vanish into their holes.’

One brief review here describes the effect as ‘pure jazz’ and I like this comparison very much. Like jazz, the rhythm is often more important than the melody (if that makes any sense when applied to prose. In my head it means something, anyway). Promotional materials are keen to stress the modern grittiness of the life on display here – this ain't no Heidi seems to be a constant tagline – but to me this reads like a smooth continuation of the Romansh literature of the mid-late twentieth century and the links with tradition are far more obvious than the modern differences.

Like the stories in this collection, The Alp is concerned with petty rivalries, raising pigs, milking cows, hunters passing through the valleys, the dangers of weather, the irritations of tourism. Farmers still compete for the honor of having one of their animals named pugniera, or the season's strongest cow. And Donal McLaughlin's neat, unimposing translation leaves the flashes of Romansh in direct speech pleasingly intact: vualà, lu tgau ti, smaledida portga ("dirty pig"?).

This is the first volume in an alpine trilogy which Dalkey Archive will be publishing in full over the next couple of years. Hopefully the other two are like this one: short, sweet, stylistically clever, very atmospheric – an appealing window on life in one of the most rural parts of Western Europe. ( )