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 ] Thomas Steinhövel is a freelance reporter, who travels much of the time. His trips take him to Milan and Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan; to northern Norway and southern Spain; to Kosovo, Serbia and to the International Court in the Hague. Wherever he goes, he works hard on the details of his latest story, getting to know people who’ve been involved in the war in the Balkans. Steinhövel, then, has many a tale to tell, both fair and foul; Urs Mannhart skilfully weaves together the many different storylines in this complex novel.
«Mountaineering in the Lowlands» is a title, which refers in the first instance to a series of photos of mountaineers in full kit on their way through a lowland area. It’s Summer and what these men are wearing is something they don’t need where they are. The same thing happens to many of the characters in Mannhart’s novel: they have the wrong weapons in the wrong place. Even the 35-year old Steinhövel, who criss-crosses Europe and falls hopelessly in love with a Finnish woman, seems from time to time to be in the wrong place. He wants, above all, to research his stories properly, to write soundly-based reports; but the conditions he has to work under are visibly deteriorating. Meanwhile, his editor at the newspaper wants nothing more than entertaining copy, and not too long, either. Steinhövel rejects this, and writes intense, searing stories from a land that spares no-one.

Recommended for translation by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia:
www.12swissbooks.ch

[ Favourite quote ] «In front of them a burly man with red hair suddenly clambered out of a prehistoric-looking Mercedes and came marching straight up to them; in a face all covered with freckles, his eyes were deep-set under thick brows and beaming as if he were encountering friends of long years’ standing.»

[ book info ] Mannhart, Urs: Bergsteigen im Flachland. (original language: German) Mountaineering in the Lowlands. Secession Verlag, Zürich, 2014 . ISBN: 978-3-905951-32-5 .