Born 1939 in Rapperswil on the Obersee lakeshore in the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland, the son of an organ builder made his studies in London and Fribourg, after a training as an export clerk.

[1] A new narrative form was introduced with Commedia (1980), in a certain way basing on Dante's Inferno, for which Späth was awarded with the German book prize Alfred-Döblin-Preis.

[2] Späth's literally cosmos is characterized by love, lust and vices, and a propensity to the blazing sensuality and baroque awareness of the transience of everything earthly.

The Swiss films Der Landvogt von Greifensee (1979) and Völlerei oder Inselfest (1980) base on Gerold Späth's novels.

Anyway, Switzerland and his childhood in Rapperswil, which Gerold Späth compares with Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, as he grew up with the so-called Seebuebedütsch (Zürichsee children language, meaning also 'wild') and to write on the people's mouth.