On Mann146;s Mountain

In Davos, the event always takes over the place. But lounge in the bookstores of this crime-free ski resort and you find what sells is not Thomas Mann but cold and bleak murder stories

Something curious happened this January. Davos lost its alter ego. The World Economic Forum began in the Swiss Alps at the appointed hour, but there was no counter-narrative in the plains below. The World Social Forum did not convene in one place, Porto Alegre, Mumbai or Nairobi. Or rather it decentralised, with meetings organised worldwide to keep alive its message that 8220;another world is possible8221;. Davos became the only globalisation party that month.

WEF week, when all the world8217;s rich, powerful and intelligent folks gather to discuss the agenda for the year ahead, so dominates the Alpine ski resort that Davos is for most of us an event rather than a place. More than 2,000 participants arrive, checking every two hours a four-day calendar of more than 200 sessions to decide what may be enriching. A debate on sovereign wealth funds? Or on the possibility of America8217;s economic slowdown grinding into a recession? Or, at 7 am, would it be nicer to hear Bono take on Al Gore on the effects of climate crisis solutions on the world8217;s poor? Nights in Davos week are spent sleepless, hopping from one party to another, carrying decent shoes in the ubiquitous WEF plastic bags, in which will be deposited clunky snow shoes once indoors.

The debates are many-sided but8212; oh bliss8212;how neat it all is. No skirmishes in sessions8212;even Iranian and American diplomats look civilly away from each other. No overshooting the schedule. Not even Pervez Musharraf would dare do that under the supervision of the presiding deity, WEF executive chairman Klaus Schwab, a Swiss of course. No protestors beyond the barbed wire struggling to show itself above three feet of snow. The only one I spot on the Promenade, its buildings still square and unspectacular, a legacy of the town8217;s sanatorium past, is in a wheelbarrow and politely sipping a glass of wine.

And, in this gathering of world8217;s richest men, no crime. Go to the police station to report a loss, and you find a stack of tourist brochures, with the cops cheerfully advising that you ask the insurance industry in your country to be more current.
But it8217;s disorienting. Practically everyone you meet, even the sweet lady serving the Grison8217;s barley soup at dinner, is from out of town to help host Davos, the event. The odd person who does call Davos home is catering to the needs of outsiders, the WEF regulars and the ski set who come here for Europe8217;s most spectacular slopes. Even the town8217;s most celebrated painter, Ernst Kirchner, the museum staff tell you, came here to heal his lungs8212;and to lose his mind.

What do Davosians do when they are by themselves in their home in the mountains? By evidence of the number of bookstores, they read. So I pick the most inviting of them, and dash into Buchhandlung Littera.
Ruth Mueller hospitably takes a quick glance around her empire, noting the giggles of contentment coming from the children8217;s corner, and offers to take me on a tour of her bestselling books.

New age-y Paulo Coelho flies off the shelves as quick, she says, as Swiss fiction writer Martin Suter. Isabel Allende sells in German translation, but not as much as Khaled Hosseini8217;s Tausend Strahlende Sonnen, A Thousand Splendid Suns to you and me. Mueller says she has ordered piles of titles about the Middle East after its success matched that of The Kite Runner. Die Mittagsfrau by Julia Franck is also recommended. Winner of the German Book Prize, it recounts the story of a woman who leaves her child behind at a railway station in 1945.

But what really keeps the readers of Davos turning the pages, Mueller rubs her hand at the thought, are cold and bleak murder stories. Yes, Donna Leon, with her warm and comforting Venetian detective stories, do sell surprise: Leon, a Venice resident herself, is a star among speakers of German, not Italian. But what keeps the town up are books by Henning Mankell Sweden and Arnaldur Indrioason Iceland. Whoever said resident of cold places like tropical novels!

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And now, for the local brands. Piles of Thomas Mann8217;s Magic Mountain, which in a way foresaw the WEF with its Davos-based rumination on the world8217;s problems in the early 20th century, are sitting on a cabinet. Those, sighs Mueller, are for the tourists; even she, a compulsive reader, could not finish it. Thank God for the movie, so we all know how it ended. And Heidi? Maienfeld, where Johanna Spyri, set her story is on the drive up from Zurich. Tourist stores in these parts stock well on Heidi mementos. But Mueller says, the book that really keeps her young readers interested is A Bell for Ursli, with painting by Alois Carigiet, also from this patch of the Alps.
As my lunch-hour break ends and I walk into the WEF Congress Centre, books are being distributed. Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. Wish I had asked Mueller if she stocked it.