Kent Haruf's 'Benediction' Found in Swiss Recycling Center, Traveled 8,418 km from Idaho Library

In his column 'Zugaben' for NZZ am Sonntag, Manfred Papst recounts discovering a copy of Kent Haruf's novel 'Benediction' in the book exchange area of a recycling center in Uster, Switzerland. The book, a 2013 first edition published by Alfred A. Knopf in New York, was found intact with its dust jacket while Papst was disposing of electronic waste. Inside, stamped entries reveal it belonged to the Hailey Public Library in Idaho and was marked 'withdrawn,' suggesting it was never borrowed before being sold for a dollar. The distance from Hailey to Uster is 8,418 kilometers. Papst, who had read the German translation titled 'Kostbare Tage,' recognized it as the story of hardware store owner Dad Lewis's last summer. Haruf, born in Pueblo, Colorado, in 1943 and died in Salida, Colorado, in 2014, set all six of his novels in the fictional town of Holt, Colorado. His final novel, 'Unsere Seelen bei Nacht' ('Our Souls at Night'), was adapted into a film starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. Papst now keeps the book on his reading desk, treating it kindly and hoping it might one day share its journey. The column is part of Papst's long-running series on language, education, and the pleasure of digression, now collected in an anthology.