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

[ Consiglio per un libro di Literatur Schweiz ] Pascal Kramer's (*1961) second novel opens onto a brutal scene. Two children die during a silly and reckless game under the horrified gaze of their young uncle. Instead of reacting, the family seals itself up in a deathly silence. In their sun- and wind-beaten house reminiscent of an Edward Hopper painting, mourning parents Vincent and Louise sink into muteness. The Geneva author's novels, from «Manu» (1995) to the recent «Gloria» (2013), excel in portraying troubled states of mind and periods in which time comes to a standstill. Children often act as a trigger in Kramer’s texts. Deprived of their innocence, they send the adults into a spiral of despair and inaction, which not even rage is powerful enough to break through. Kramer’s pared-down writing, with few dialogues but an almost manic attentiveness to actions and their psychological motives, takes its readers for a ride on an existential wave of nausea that is powerfully contemporary.

(Pierre Lepori, transl. by Andrea Mason Willfratt)

[ Citazione ] « Elle n'avait pas de mots pour consoler une peine pareille, sans doute n'avait-elle même aucune idée d'un tel degré de souffrance. »

[ Informazioni sul libro ] Kramer, Pascale: The Living. . (original language: English) Les Vivants. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2008 (2001). ISBN: 978-0-8032-7823-3.
Traduzione dal French di Tamsin Black