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.

The range of information is currently available in five languages: German, English, French, Czech and Hungarian.

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 Europäische Literaturtage ] “Everyday life in Moldavia is extremely brutal – if I had to explain how it is, one to one, I’d have to become even more coarse. We have a massive identity crisis, and we are Europe’s poorest country. So we need external enemies: Germans, Americans and Arabians. Or we take out the abuse on women.”
This quotation from an interview in the TAZ daily newspaper offers some explanation of why Nicoleta Esinencu’s play “FUCK YOU, Eu.ro.Pa!” not only caused a scandal in Moldavia. Esinencu does not shy away from indulging her love of speaking the language she hears and absorbs every day.

“FUCK YOU” is the monologue of a young woman who explains to her father why (as part of a writing competition) she has no answer for the question: “What has my country done for me and how have I returned the favour?” Her account of this question – and her country – means that she actually does understand how to do something in return for what she has been given. Using mockery, hatred and strong language, she tries to express what she missed out hearing in her youth amidst standard phrases such as “Privatization. Modernization. Federalization. Globalization. Legalizing. Devaluing. Standardizing. Popularizing.” She missed honest feelings and genuine gestures. “FUCK YOU” represents the globally unmistakeable outcry against a world, which is devoted to profit and without concern for the losses, and this is even more unashamedly true in the Eastern block as opposed to the West.

(BM)

[ book info ] Esinencu, Nicoleta: Fuck you, Eu.ro.Pa! . (original language: Deutsch) Aus dem Rumän. von Helga Kopp. Edition Solitude, Stuttgart, 2005 .