Incentives - Neue Literatur aus Österreich

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[ Buchtipp von Incentives ] Reinhard Kaiser-Mühlecker’s first novel Der lange Gang über die Stationen (The Long Walk From Station to Station) takes place in the Salzkammergut Area in upper Austria in the 1950s. The young farmer Theodor marries a woman from the city. The couple’s young love blossoms like an innocent and tender spring flower. When the two of them take a walk down to the river or across the hills, it feels like a rediscovery of the romanticism of the 19th Century.

Their love is described as being so pure and idyllic the reader soon realizes that it cannot last. “Theodor, you have to be careful that you don’t run smack into a wall!“ warns his farmboy. But he, the sensitive farmer, does anyway. Not only inner but also outer problems weigh him down: his investments fail to pay off; his neighbor, one of his few confidants, commits suicide; his father is seriously ill. Theodor falls deeper and deeper into the black hole that opens up between himself and those around him; the end of the novel sees him escaping into the sinister woods on a dark winter day, along with a bottle of spirits.

Der lange Gang über die Stationen is a book providing a dense atmosphere that suceeds in captivating its readers from the first to the last page. A new voice: the language is poetic without being tacky, classic-antiquated yet full of small breaks in the choice of words and syntax, artificial yet natural. An extraordinary first novel by an extraordinarily talented young author.

(Translated by Johanna Ellsworth)
Long Version: Peter Landerl, October 2008

[ Info ] Kaiser-Mühlecker, Reinhard: Der lange Gang über die Stationen. (The Long Walk From Station to Station). (original language: Deutsch) Hoffmann und Campe, Hamburg, 2008 . ISBN: 978-3-455-40104-2.