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 Literatur Schweiz ] Born in 1985, Dorothee Elmiger makes a fascinatingly fearless debut as a novelist. «Einladung an die Waghalsigen» (Invitation to the Bold of Heart) explores paths that lie far away from the mainstream and develops a poetic pertinacity. Margarete Stein is sitting at her kitchen table reading – and reading. She lives right above the police station which is headed by her father who is a police commander. The mother ran away long ago. She reads and her sister Fritzi wanders about the area. Together they search for a mysterious river called Buenaventura.

In an attempt to write a chronicle the sisters jot down everything they observe, explore, hope, wish for. In her «novel» Dorothee Elmiger does not arrange all these explorations into a closed frame, rather, she presents them in the form of singular particles and fragments that oscillate between close observation, inner perception and read up quotations. There is a certain unrest spinning inside her text, an unrest that reflects the quest for one’s own wishes and for a purpose in life. Elmiger’s poetic novel is like a intensely smouldering fire that cannot be controlled. Its musical and linguistic structure reveals a certain obstinacy and poetic audacity. All this makes the book a surprising debut and an invitation to curiosity.

(Beat Mazenauer, transl. by Anja Hälg)

[ Favourite quote ] «Der Winter bleibt eine Leerzeile auf dem Bogen Papier, den ich in die Schreibmaschine spannte.»

[ book info ] Elmiger, Dorothee: Invitation to the Bold of Heart. (original language: English) Einladung an die Waghalsigen. Seagull Books, London, 2011 (2008). ISBN: 978-0857420190.
Translated from German by Katy Derbyshire