Switzerland, The Golden Cage

What is the book about?

I went to Zurich for three months. I stayed for eight years. This book is what happened in between.

Put like that, it sounds like a story about work. And, in part, it is: there’s all the vocabulary I learnt the hard way, the sort in which ‘optimise’ means someone is about to lose their job. But there’s also a son, a marriage that ended, a night involving the police and a weekend behind bars. The last two had not featured in the itinerary. And a country that smiles as it presents you with an eye-watering bill.

It is also a reflection on men’s place in contemporary society, drawn from my own experience: fatherhood, the weight of expectations, vulnerability, and the search for an identity when you lose your bearings, at work as well as in your private life. Because a man is expected to hold it together. Preferably without making a fuss.

What genre is it?

On paper: a memoir. I call it a bureaucratic comedy. There are plenty of laughs. Then, at some point, you remember it actually happened.