New Literature from Austria
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).
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Die Voest-Kinder Reichart, Elisabeth
Voest, Austria’s most important industrial company, developed from the Hermann Göring Steelworks. The history of this plant has long since been researched by historians, and there have also ...
Geld! Rosei, Peter
Peter Rosei has written – in a highly condensed form – a Viennese social novel which has only marginally to do with the finance industry, but which nevertheless focuses on money. This is ...
Die Tiere von Paris Schreiner, Margit
"You write on a board that you have taken from a building site, sitting up in bed, while your husband works at his desk." (p. 8) That is how Die Tiere von Paris (The Animals of ...
Sommer wie Winter Taschler, Judith W.
Judith W. Taschler’s ”Sommer wie Winter” (Like Summer like Winter) may be her first novel, but it is nevertheless a mature book as regards both style and narrative technique. The author ...
Kaltschweißattacken Falkner, Michaela
I would like to lie on the edge of the world... Love is the continuation of war by other means, writes Elfriede Jelinek. “There is always violence here. There is always fighting here. It is ...
Alle sieben Wellen Glattauer, Daniel
With readers having refused to accept the open ending of Gut gegen Nordwind (‘Good against the North Wind’) for three years, Daniel Glattauer has finally given Leo and Emmi a second chance: ...
Die Morawische Nacht Handke, Peter
Night has already fallen as seven invited guests arrive on board a houseboat on the Morawa, a tributary of the Danube, to listen to the story of a former author, the story of a journey to the end ...
Ruhm Kehlmann, Daniel
Ruhm (‘Fame’) is the laconic title of the new book by best-selling author Daniel Kehlmann. Its subtitle proclaims it to be 'A Novel in Nine Stories' and indeed the individual stories are ...
Paloma Mayröcker, Friederike
Friederike Mayröcker’s latest book publication, auspiciously entitled Paloma, comprises 99 letters to an addressee who is not known by name. However, the recipient, addressed as 'Dear friend', ...
Luciferin Rainer, Angelika
The title of this first book, which is extraordinary both as far as its content and its language are concerned, derives from the fluorescent substance of glowworms. The short protagonist Lucy ...
Ich reiß mir eine Wimper aus und stech dich damit tot. Winkler, Josef
Anthemic Prose Since Natura morta (2001), Roppongi (2007) and certainly since his new anthemic prose work, no-one in Austrian literature has been able to hold a candle to Büchner Prize winner ...
Von Dschalalabad nach Bad Schallerbach Einzinger, Erwin
The rather tired humour of the echoing syllables in the title is already an example of the madcap toing and froing and toing that characterizes Erwin Einzinger’s writing. Two little arrows ...
Schaumschluchten Balàka , Bettina
Bettina Balàka, who was born in 1966, is a very versatile authoress. She writes novels, short stories, poems, plays, radio plays and essays and has received many literary prizes. In ...
Eigenleben oder wie schreibt man eine Novelle Aigner, Christoph Wilhelm
Marina di Cecina in winter. A seaside resort without visitors, the houses by the beach locked and barricaded, in mothballs until the next season. Everything cold and damp, poorly heated or shut. ...
Wenn Kinder Steine ins Wasser werfen Bayer, Xaver
Endless stream of thought Xaver Bayer rebels against the full stop A man is waiting at Brussels Airport for his flight to leave. Never mind the gate. Naturally he passes the waiting ...
Rauchernovelle Dahimène, Adelheid
As a non-smoker one comes to Rauchernovelle (Smoker’s Story) with mixed feelings. There is a woman sitting a train and complaining that she is forbidden to smoke. Should one feel sympathy here? ...
Kein einziger Tag Stift, Linda
The Austrian biotope always seems to have the right degree of dampness for ominous cases of symbiosis. Anyone who wants to be spared the need to look at the political and media scenes for some ...
Alles über Sally Geiger, Arno
If anyone ever thought Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary was the last word on the everyday horrors of bourgeois marriage, they were very wrong. Marriage dramas are still able to captivate and ...
Das Leben der Wünsche Glavinic, Thomas
Thomas Glavinic specializes in declines. His protagonists fight the gravity of all earthly ramblings; they grapple with apathy, alcohol, and demoralization. His early novels often were peopled by ...
Das Schöne und das Notwendige Grill, Andrea
Finzens and Fiat make up an all-male household that stands on wobbly financial legs; while Finzens, who is from Bulgaria, at least has a steady income – his job is to keep the peace in the ...
Das Matratzenhaus Hochgatterer, Paulus
Many of the inhabitants of Paulus Hochgatterer’s fictive town Furth am See have grounds for revenge. Bad things happen and have happened there: Children disappear, are beaten, disowned, and ...
Anleitung zum Fest Meschik, Lukas
Following his debut novel Jetzt die Sirenen (Now the Sirens), the young Viennese author Lukas Meschik has again proven his talent with his impressive and confident use of language in Anleitung zum ...
Von den Himmeln Petricek, Gabriele
The three novellas in Von den Himmel compose a literary “triptych” on the theme of fault and failure. Taking the art history term for a three-paneled (altar) picture literally, we can ...
Giftige Kleider Scholl, Sabine
In freezing February, Sabine Scholl presents a mystery that takes place in summer, and whose main protagonist, Gina Sonnenfels, comes from Vienna, lives in Berlin, and has “a good nose for the ...
Fütter mich Travnicek, Cornelia
She thought of the children's astonishment that it was enough to touch one of the large granite stones with a finger. With a child’s hand. And everything began to sway. The world of the ...
Familie Salzmann Hackl, Erich
While literature often claims to show how the family history of an individual inevitably determines his fate, Erich Hackl keeps to real events, which are tragic enough and which he supplements ...
Andernorts Rabinovici, Doron
Doron Rabinovici was born in Tel Aviv and moved to Vienna at the age of three. What he writes has always been shaped by the tension between his life in Austria and his vital interest in Israel. ...
Fremdes Land Sautner, Thomas
In the tradition of literary dystopias such as George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Thomas Sautner bitingly describes a fictitious society in an unspecified location in ...
Schwester der Angst Mischkulnig, Lydia
It is the story of an obsession, which Lydia Mischkulnig describes with an absolutely pathological love of detail in her new novel Schwestern der Angst (Sisters of Fear). Renate and Marie are ...
Bewegungsmelder Ballhausen, Thomas
"Don't cry - work!" This instruction was chosen by the author Rainald Goetz as the subtitle for his early novel, Irre (Mad). Hence the underlying theme of the work: existential ...
