ICH WEIß NICHT, irgend jemand hat geschrieben, das sei Biedermeier. […] Gut, kann man schreiben. Ich würde sagen, Romantik und nicht Biedermeier. Es ist in viel höherem Maße ein romantisches Buch.” The book in question, which none other than Marcel Reich-Ranicki labels a Romantic book in his “Literarisches Quartett,” was one of the rare literary successes of the 1990s in German-language literature, and the fact that it was given the full treatment on television is certainly indicative of the dimensions of this success. Schlafes Bruder (Brother of Sleep, 1992), the first novel of the Austrian writer and musician from the region of Voralberg, Robert Schneider, was first rejected by twenty-three publishing houses, before being finally published by Reclam Leipzig in 1992. It became an immediate and overwhelming success with the reading public and the majority of critics alike. To date it has sold over 1.4 million copies in the German-speaking world and has been translated into more than twenty-four languages.

What was it that gripped the imagination of its readers to such an extraordinary extent? Schlafes Bruder tells the story of the musical genius Elias Alder, who is born into the remote hamlet of Eschberg in deepest Voralberg in the early nineteenth century. In a sublime, but also deeply terrifying experience, he is initiated into the music of nature and, through this, endowed with a unique musical talent.