Incentives - New Literature from Austria

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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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[ book tip by Incentives ] To make childhood the sole topic of a text is a hazardous undertaking. Michael Stavarič does it in his latest book – and the text is surprising, though it is hardly surprising that it is more so than its two predecessors Stillborn and Terminifera. Nkaah: Experiments on a Living Object presents itself as a series of short prose pieces, which nevertheless are closely connected as far as the context is concerned. The text – both as a whole and also in its details – is a childhood fantasy or even a fantasy about childhood. At one point, the first-person narrator, who is at once childlike and adult, merges with the fantasy being Nkaah, his own invention and a figure of identification for him. Occasionally, he also slips into the roles of other childhood idols, for example Neil Armstrong, or Vasco da Gama. All the enigmatic, mystical events that happen to the characters are always located, both temporally and geographically, in a world that proves to be an indissoluble mixture of fantasy and reality, of the present time and (ancient) history.
Exploring a whole range of subjects, Stavarič’s book revolves around a person’s childhood and youth as a place of development, but also the losses associated with it. Nkaah certainly lives from its form, which once again distinguishes the author as an original and sensitive stylist, with a fine sense of the beautiful.

(Translated by Peter Waugh)
Short review by Jelena Dabic, November 2008
Original review

[ book info ] Stavarič, Michael: Nkaah. Experimente am lebenden Objekt (Experiments on a Living Object). (original language: Deutsch) kooksbooks , Idstein, 2008 . ISBN: 978-3-937445-28-1.