Incentives - New Literature from Austria

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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).

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[ book tip by Incentives ] Childhood in Malaysia, adolescence in Germany during the period of the Cold War. His father, a British secret agent, is at home in many languages, yet relates nothing in any of them. He disappears, then returns, giving no explanations, and remains silent to the very end. Quite early on, the son Heinrich attempts to interpret this silence and explain it.
This story of childhood is embedded in the context of a recent farewell – the death of the wife of the narrator, who now remains behind, alone with the children. Another kind of silence, another kind of unattainability, another drawing of borders becomes evident here, as does the necessity of making another kind of ‘translation’, one that translates life into death and back again.
Twenty chapters arose over a long period of time, some of them quite independent of the others, fitted together to create a comprehensive arc. The text is founded upon the ethics of “looking with uncertainty” and seeks the evanescent and the minute. The narrative – despite its monumental form – remains light and lucid as far as the subject-matter is concerned. It also proves to be a culmination of the narrative and poetic process that Waterhouse has developed in his work over two decades, in his fusion of poetic questions, lyrical moments and narrative reflection. The author travels fleet-footed with his love of language, which has at its disposal all the registers of scorn, humour and irony.
(Krieg und Welt) is a complex text about childhood and death, about the violence that exists in and through language, about the borderlines drawn between the media and power – and it is a book about farewells and connection. However, above all, it is a book about ardency, about the sensuality of perception, the desire to describe and the flourishing of the linguistic imagination. It is a development novel, an instructive novel and a family novel, a novel about the power of language and the magic of language; it is a book about love and fatherhood, and it is an almost Orphic chant about the loss of the beloved. In release, in letting go and in loss it becomes possible for a non-material form of surrender and existence to come into being.br />
English translation by Peter Waugh.
Abbreviated review by Martin Kubaczek, February 2009.
Original version

[ book info ] Waterhouse, Peter: (Krieg und Welt). [(War and World)]. (original language: Deutsch) Jung und Jung, Salzburg, Wien, 2006 . ISBN: 3-902497-13-0.