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

[ Knjižni namig pošilja Beat Mazenauer ] In 2008, the French Arabic scholar and novelist Mathias Enard published the novel "Zone". His most ambitious and successful book to date, this epic work in one sentence over 500 pages tells of the wars of the 20th century. The main character is the former secret agent Francis Servain who wants to change his life and so takes stock of his past. On a 500-kilometre train ride from Milan to Rome, he looks back through a meandering stream of memories at his career on Mediterranean battlefields - from Algeria and Lebanon to Yugoslavia.

"Zone" is a superb narrative work on war and despair. Vicariously, as it were, Francis experiences what people of the 20th century suffered as victims and inflicted on others as perpetrators. The regions in which he operates are identical to those sunny destinations frequented by millions of tourists. These tourists now dance, so to speak, ‘on the cadavers’ of recent wars.

"Zone", wrote Grégoire Leménager in the Nouvel Observateur, is less a novel than a ‘phantom train populated with crimes against humanity, with rape, and crime-obsessed authors (Burroughs, Lowry, Joyce...)’. Enard deserves praise for his ingenuity in finding a subtle linguistic form for his incredibly detailed knowledge of war, crime, and the human condition. Zone is a new Iliad, the portrait of a barbarous century that is still not over and so remains disturbing to this day.

[ Informacije ] Enard, Mathias: Zone. (original language: Französisch) Actes Sud, Paris, 2008 .