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

[ كتاب مقترح من Incentives ] Many of the inhabitants of Paulus Hochgatterer’s fictive town Furth am See have grounds for revenge. Bad things happen and have happened there: Children disappear, are beaten, disowned, and abused. Women slit their wrists and desolate teens try to hang themselves.

The world is vast and incomprehensible, and the novel’s fragmentation of narrative perspectives conveys this well. The story is told from four points of view: that of a psychiatrist, a detective superintendent, a primary school teacher, and an adopted adolescent girl with an Indian background. The girl becomes the victim of an international child pornography ring.

The way in which Hochgatterer recounts the life and survival of a child so badly abused is breathtaking: The adolescent with the suggestive name Fanni (funny, fanny) speaks to the reader in the first person, directly and unfiltered. The reader does not learn the details of the abuse itself, but does grasp which survival strategies become necessary in order to be able to counter the adult perpetrators. “The only thing that really counts is keeping your eyes open,” Fanni teaches her adoptive sister Switi. Fanni develops an obsession with escape routes, makes up stories about the liberation of exotic animals, and uses the Internet to get the knowledge she needs for her last act of revenge.

For knowledge is power. Power, powerlessness, and empowerment – this triad joins a web of motives centering on revenge and pain. Beaten fathers who beat their children, powerless children who in a minutely planned campaign of revenge transform their role as victim. Hochgatterer situates all this in a small Austrian town, where the gap between superficial idyll and underlying cruelty is particularly glaring. It is only a matter of time until this gripping novel with its brilliant dialogues and the narrative’s artful integration of cliffhanger moments is made into a movie.

Abbreviated review by Kristina Werndl, May 2010. English translation by Laura Radosh.
Complete version in German: http://www.literaturhaus.at/?id=8364

[ معلومات ] Hochgatterer, Paulus: Das Matratzenhaus. Deuticke, Wien, 2010 . ISBN: 978-3-552-06112-5.