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.

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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 Literatur Schweiz ] The Swiss born Martin R. Dean is the son of two fathers, both from Trinidad. He varies this private fact in his novel by using different narrative forms. His first person narrator finds this situation to be rather painful, because two fathers is one to many. When he becomes a father himself, he sets out to find his biological father who lives London. He meets him in an old folks home, they solve their helpless silence by going on a trip ‹home› to Trinidad. But in the tropical climate any attempt to clarify things vanishes in the maelstrom of sensations and perceptions. For the narrator, meeting this stranger generates moments of clarification and of alienation at the same time.
In a sensual and intelligent way, «Meine Väter» is about the quest for a steady identity which basically cannot be found anymore. The patriarcal system tries to keep this illusion alive though, but only the mother is certain. At the end, the narrator has to recognise that despite his yearning he cannot deal with his tropical ‹home›, neither in physical nor in culinary matters. He has long become (a slightly atypical) Swiss. «I am me» is his conclusion. I am me and my friends are my family.

(Beat Mazenauer, transl. by Anja Hälg)

[ Favourite quote ] «Jeder Vater gibt die Wortmöglichkeit, die Wortmächtigkeit an seinen Sohn weiter.»

[ book info ] Dean, Martin R.: Meine Väter. (original language: Deutsch) My Fathers. Hanser Verlag, München, 2003 . ISBN: 3-446-20266-8.