top of page

Writer & journalist

Mirko Beetschen

Mirko Beetschen was born in Interlaken, Switzerland, in 1974 and grew up on Lake Thun. After his studies of English and American Literature, Media Sciences and English Linguistics, follow stays in the US and England, bigger and smaller jobs as bookseller, cave guide, playing bus supervisor and magazine editor. He has been working as a writer, freelance journalist and entrepreneur since 2005. He is co-owner of the Bergdorf agency.

Writer & journalist

Mirko Beetschen

Mirko Beetschen was born in Interlaken, Switzerland, in 1974 and grew up on Lake Thun. After his studies of English and American Literature, Media Sciences and English Linguistics, follow stays in the US and England, bigger and smaller jobs as bookseller, cave guide, playing bus supervisor and magazine editor. He has been working as a writer, freelance journalist and entrepreneur since 2005. He is co-owner of the Bergdorf agency.

Mirko's Instagram

Agenda

Book premiere

«Das Haus der Architektin»

Mirko Beetschen’s new novel «Das Haus der Architektin» («The Architect’s House») is a mixture of scary thriller and alternative architectural history, a gripping haunted house novel in a modernist building.

https://spheres.cc/buehne/kalender/

Sphères, Zürich

Tuesday, March 28 2023, 20h00 

Reading «Das Haus der Architektin»

Mirko Beetschen’s new novel «Das Haus der Architektin» («The Architect’s House») is a mixture of scary thriller and alternative architectural history, a gripping haunted house novel in a modernist building.

https://www.haupt.ch/kurse-events/events/

Bookstore Haupt, Bern

Friday, Mai 5 2023, 19h00

Lesung «Das Haus der Architektin»

Bibliothek Spiez

Freitag, 15. September 2023, 20h00

Press & awards

Mirko's favourites

Swiss magazine «Homes» asked Mirko Beetschen to name ten of his favourite objects and places.

Bern vistas

«Another day, another light mood... Even if you think you know a city inside out, there's always something new to discover. Bern through the eyes of Mirko Beetschen.»

Literary award for «Bel Veder»

Mirko Beetschen is awarded with the literary prize of Bern's Office of Culture 2019. – «With ‹Bel Veder›, author Mirko Beetschen successfully creates a visually stunning and thrilling Gothic novel, in which he playfully messes with the reader's expectations. The setting is an old grand hotel in the Swiss Alps in the autumn of 1946.»

Nightmare hotel

«Mirko Beetschen builds up the tension very skilfully and weaves in new, surprising plotlines (…). And of course the story is so gripping and creepy that you can hardly put the book down.»

No bedtime story

«(…) Mirko Beetschen proves to be a talented narrator who knows how to capture moods accurately and make atmospheres come alive almost physically in his dense language.»

Zeitgeist

«The rest of Switzerland likes to scoff about Bern’s proverbial slowness and that things don’t move here. In their well written and beautifully illustrated guide, Mirko Beetschen and Stéphane Houlmann prove that this prejudice definitely doesn’t apply to the local culture and gastronomy scene.»

Inexorably thrilling

«How author and performer Mirko Beetschen and his sound artist Barbara Schirmer took the tension to the extreme cannot be imitated. Both have proved that they are artists of the first rank, artists who create mood and atmosphere.»

Dive in

«Mirko Beetschen and Stéphane Houlmann are veritable conoisseurs of Bern. With a keen eye, they look at neighbourhoods, bars, cafés, hotels, culture and restaurants. Their selections represents what they stand for themselves: quality, nonchalance and taste.»

A very thrilling read

«In his debut novel, Mirko Beetschen impressively and with purposeful slowness describes how a fleeting acquaintance gradually evolves into a frighteningly close and involuntary relationship.»

Out now!

Island madness

Mirko Beetschen’s new novel «Das Haus der Architektin» («The Architect’s House») is a mixture of scary thriller and alternative architectural history, a gripping haunted house novel in a modernist building.

Writer & journalist

Mirko

Beetschen

Column

Alter Ego

Since summer 2022 Mirko Beetschen has a regular column in German-language queer magazine “Mannschaft”. In it he has to deal with his alter ego – or the other way round.

Issue summer 2022

Issue autumn 2022

Ausgabe Winter 2022

read column

With Stéphane Houlmann, Mirko Beetschen has produced the interior books «Bergwärts» (DVA, 2012), «Men's Homes» (Knesebeck, 2013) and «Wohnort Zürich» (DVA, 2014) as well as the «Insider Guide Bern» (Zytglogge, 2019).

 

His first novel, the psychological thriller «Schattenbruder» (Bilgerverlag), was published in 2014. For his second novel, the Gothic novel «Bel Veder» (Zytglogge, 2018), he received the Literature Prize of the Canton of Bern in 2019. In 2020 he published a first series of art cards from his photo project «Urban Wanderings».

His new novel, the thriller «Das Haus der Architektin» will be out in March 2023 (Zytglogge).

Books & cards

Pre-Order

Thriller

The Architect's House

Out in March 2023

Hidden away on an island in Lake Neuchâtel, inaccessible and abandoned for decades, lies the brutalist estate «Les Espoirs», breeding ground for countless legends. Here lived the meanwhile mostly forgotten architect Marie-Yolande Rabaut, who didn’t allow any reports on her house whatsoever. When Michael T. Ungermann is asked to visit and write about this modernist extravaganza as the first journalist ever, he can hardly believe his luck.

Photo project

Urban Wanderings

Signed & limited edition of 200 sets of 15 prints

«Another day, another light mood... Even if you think you know a city inside out, there's always something new to discover. Bern through the eyes of Mirko Beetschen.»

Umbauen & Renovieren, 01/21

Gothic novel

Bel Veder

Trapped in the mountains

«With ‹Bel Veder›, author Mirko Beetschen successfully creates a visually stunning and thrilling Gothic novel, in which he playfully messes with the reader's expectations. The setting is an old grand hotel in the Swiss Alps in the autumn of 1946.»

Literary Commission of Bern's Office of Culture

City guide

Insider Guide Bern

Mirko Beetschen & Stéphane Houlmann

The authors present a personally curated selection of around 60 Bernese hotspots in German and English. Restaurants, shops, cafés and bars are just as important as places of culture, architecture and outdoor spaces. The short, bilingual texts are supplemented with city maps and photographs by Lorenz Cugini.