The Philosopher's Stone assembles various narrative stands into a cohesive and thought-provoking tale of our times. The trenchant criticism of continuous self-optimization and esoteric ideology are astonishingly subtle and reward repeated reading.

Philipp Schönthaler, born in 1976, studied English and Art in Vancouver. In 2010, he was a fellow of the writing-workshop at the LCB (Literature Colloquium Berlin). Philipp Schönthaler won the Clemens Brentano Prize 2013 and was invited to the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize Reading in the same year.