Incentives - New Literature from Austria

readme.cc provides multilingual access to the latest Austrian literature. In collaboration with the Literaturhaus in Vienna the reading forum offers the latest insights about literature published in Austria.

Literary journalists and researchers introduce current new publications; reading samples allow for a closer look at the texts; short portraits of the authors complement the picture.

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The Project "Incentives" targets at the internationalization of Austrian literature, respectively the translation of current texts.

Project realization: the Office of Documentation of Contemporary Austrian Literature (reviews, author’s portraits) – The Association of Translators (translations) – readme.cc (infrastructure).

http://www.literaturhaus.at

[ book tip by Incentives ] Radek Knapp can. Whatever he undertakes in the way of writing succeeds, and so does the pseudo-detective novel Reise nach Kalino (Journey to Kalino) about the city of the ‘paper faces’, the people of Kalino and other heroes male and female. The superhero of Kalino is Julius Werkazy, a detective who has known better days. One morning he takes a phone call which gives his life a momentum the like of which he had not known until then. A few hours after the call Werkazy is sitting in the train to Kalino, a place which no stranger has been to before because for three decades it has led an life of its own, completely cut off from the outside world. On the basis of the atmosphere Kalino is located somehow or other (not somewhere!) in Poland.

Immediately after his arrival the detective gets to know F. Osmos, the founder (of the country). Something unheard of has happened: the first death in the history of Kalino has occurred, and Werkazy is the one who is to solve the case. His unusual task is linked to getting to the bottom of the mystery of the people of Kalino: nobody seems to be more than thirty years old. In the course of harvesting the first fruits of his investigative labours, Werkazy begins to realise that it is not a matter of chance that he has been hired by Osmos. Behind everything there is a cleverly thought out plan. And behind this there is an author with his giant-sized imagination. As regards the detective story itself just one thing will be given away here. The body whose murderer Werkazy is looking for does not exist. …

The publisher sees Paul Auster and Philip K. Dick as Radek Knapp’s models. After reading Kalino I think there are still more clues and trails. On the one hand there are echoes of Knapp’s fellow countryman Stanisław Lem and on the other, unmistakably, of George Orwell’s 1984.

As with Knapp’s previous books, the elements that make this novel come to life include the many quick-witted dialogues and conversations as well as the sparkling verbal wit (‘I had had toasters that were more charming, …’, p.110).

All in all Kalino provides a well-balanced mixture of the literary novel, the detective novel both in its classic form and as a parody, and science fiction. A dreamlike and almost magic story, a fairy tale but without the Brothers Grimm peering out from behind one or the other corner. So it’s off to Kalino!

Abridged from the review by Janko Ferk, 2 October 2012
Full German text: http://www.literaturhaus.at/index.php?id=9654

[ book info ] Knapp, Radek: Reise nach Kalino. (original language: Deutsch) Piper, München, Zürich, 2012 . ISBN: 978-3-492-05472-0.