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 ]
Heart operations are not infrequently traumatic experiences which leave deep psychological scars. In Julya Rabinowich’s Herznovelle (Heart Story) it is, though, a love trauma which the first-person narrator is left with. In the course of the operation the surgeon has literally touched her heart. At home once more, the patient cannot find her way back into her earlier life. She begins to become estranged from her husband and goes after the doctor. The borders between imagination and reality, between what is wanted and what is possible, seem to become increasingly blurred.
At times she is fully aware of the absurdity, the ridiculousness of her behaviour and her (imagined?) passion. For example when she makes her appearance at the doctors’ ball, where instead of the surgeon she is yearning for it is only her old family doctor she bumps into, much to his surprise.
This story could also be told in a completely banal way. But then it probably would not be by Julya Rabinowich. The writer, who was born in St Petersburg, already made people sit up and take notice with her first book, Spaltkopf (Split Head), in which she describes her experiences of migration and life between two cultures in an extraordinarily poetic and vivid way. In Herznovelle it is scars of a different kind that the first-person narrator has to come to terms with. It is no child who is torn out of her world but a grown-up woman – and this happens not as the result of migration but of an operation. A doctor has saved her life; however, it is not her old life that she gets back but a new one, in which she has to learn to find her way around.
Thus this is not at all about a romance with one of those gods in white coats but much rather about orientation and disorientation, about clues to a life in which so much becomes meaningless in the face of death. And in which it suddenly does not seem so important to ‘function’. Fantasies are more important that coping with everyday life. This can also be lived without becoming involved in it.
Cool, clear prose and lyrical passages alternate in Heart Story. Julya Rabinowich’s language is simple, and precisely because of this poetic and fresh. Full of unhackneyed images and at times refreshingly down-to-earth.
A voice from which we hope that we will hear a great deal more in future.

Abridged version of the review by Sabine Dengscherz, 23 February 2011. English Translation by Leigh H. Bailey.
Full German text: http://www.literaturhaus.at/index.php?id=8780

[ book info ] Rabinowich, Julya: Herznovelle. (original language: German) Deuticke Verlag, Wien, 2011 . ISBN: 978-3-55206158-3.
Translated from German