Incentives - New Literature from Austria

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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).

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[ كتاب مقترح من Incentives ] With readers having refused to accept the open ending of Gut gegen Nordwind (‘Good against the North Wind’) for three years, Daniel Glattauer has finally given Leo and Emmi a second chance:
Leo has hardly arrived back in old Europe and activated his e-mail account, than the north wind brings post from Emmi in his virtual mailbox. The dialogue continues, as amusing and ironic as before. Already on page 32, Leo and Emmi meet each other personally. Yet while the readers wait impatiently for that ‘something’ to finally happen as they turn each page, Glattauer banishes Emmi and Leo back to their respective keyboards and lets them continue inexorably to write their crossed emails to each other. The new beginning, which Leo has brought with him from Boston, is namely just as complicated as Emmi’s marriage: the new beginning is called Pamela, who drinks “old Boston milky coffee, with a lot of water and milk and sugar, but no coffee” for breakfast, and “in the rare pauses between sex, blow-dries her flowing blond hair that reaches down to the hollows of her knees.”
Up until the last moment, Daniel Glattauer manages to make the Seven Waves as exciting as North Wind. In one place, desire is about to triumph over reason, at another everyone holds tight to their own painstakingly built-up life. The secret of Glattauer’s success: his protagonists are anything but uncomplicated and perfect, and often do not know what they want themselves. Indeed, Emmi’s self-righteousness and Leo’s restraint can really get on the readers’ nerves, yet they still remain endearing and credible. The of the novel’s correspondence format is direct and at the same time leaves a lot to the imagination. In this way, Glattauer arouses the desire for the ‘seventh wave’ not only in the addressees of the emails, but also in their many (co-)readers.
What distinguishes the seventh wave from the first six? The convict Henri Charrière is said to have stared out at the sea from Devil’s Island and ascertained that “every seventh wave was higher than the others. Finally he let his coconut-wood raft [...] be carried out to sea by the wave, which was his salvation.” What does that imply for Emmi and Leo? Nothing at all, because Leo writes: “The sea is calm, the sun blinds. I am waiting for nothing.” And Emmi answers: “I do not need any waves, not the first six and definitely not the seventh.” ... or do they need them after all?


Translated by Peter Waugh

Short review by Christine Schranz, March 2009
Original version: http://www.literaturhaus.at/index.php?id=7325

[ معلومات ] Glattauer, Daniel: Alle sieben Wellen. (All Seven Waves). (original language: Deutsch) Deuticke , Wien, 2009 . ISBN: 978-3-552-06093-7.