Literature Austria: evil humor and mild charm | NDR.de – Culture
Status: 01/28/2023 06:00 a.m
Austria is the guest country of the Leipzig Book Fair this year. The previews of the publishers are overflowing with novels from the Alpine Republic and in the first few weeks of the year one famous book of Austrian origin has been published after the other.
The best stories take place on the fringes – and the most beautiful: Arno Geiger comes from Vorarlberg, on the western edge of Austria and on the eastern edge of Lake Constance. He writes about romantic relationships on the verge of failure, about young people on the verge of so-called adulthood, about a sick father on the verge of sanity and about the beauty of the marginalized.
Arno Geiger: The stuff is on the street – and in containers
Most Austrian authors come from the fringes, says Arno Geiger, the language fringes – from landscapes strongly influenced by dialect. That’s why they develop a feeling for nuances early on, because the people in every village speak differently and the German tourists don’t understand them. This creates a magical melody for what needs to be told. “I’m one of those authors who assume that the fabrics are lying on the street,” says Geiger. “It doesn’t take much, a person, a situation – and everything is present.”
The stuff is lying on the street – when Arno Geiger explained it to us 15 years ago, we didn’t know that, as far as he was concerned, it was only an incomplete description of reality. Through his autobiographical book We now know “the happy secret”: They are not only lying on the street, but also in the paper containers. How the writer rummaged through the rubbish for years in search of letters, diaries, things that were thrown away from yesterday and the day before – that’s a great story.
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Raphaelea Edelbauer: The meaning as a whole
Arno Geiger says his Rand theory doesn’t apply to Wieners; because they were shaped by the language of the Imperial and Royal Chancellery – by courtly ceremonies. This wonderfully winding and intricate part is actually part of the repertoire of the Viennese Raphaela Edelbauer. But she can do a lot more: in her three novels, the 32-year-old has had her characters speak a wide variety of tongues. Depending on the drama and oddity of the situation into which she throws her characters with verve – these individual beings, whose pleasure and suffering eventually add up to the big picture.
“For me, the idea of the work is more important than the question of successful individual books,” says Edelbauer. “Even if the individual books have to be successful, of course, otherwise you won’t read the next one. Hopefully it will then make sense – looking at the decades that I plan to live – as a whole.”
One could say that her recently published novel “The Income Surables” was unpleasantly overconstructed due to the positive narrative exuberance, but no matter: Raphaela Edelbauer, one of the greats of contemporary Austrian literature, will be heard and read for a long time to come.
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“Frankie”: Skepticism about the grandfather
listening or reading? With Michael Köhlmeier you can’t really decide. Because he reads as beautifully as he writes:
“On Tuesday they got rid of Grandpa. He is now 71. Mom wanted me to go and pick him up. We first took the train to Krems and then continued on foot. But after a while I changed my mind and I sat on the bench behind the footbridge. Mom said: What now? I said: I’ll wait here.”
Book Quote – “Frankie”
Frank’s skepticism about his grandfather, who was in prison for 18 years, is justified. Köhlmeier’s new novel “Frankie” is a spirited variation of his decades of thinking about evil.
Writing is “cutting through language”
Wicked humor and mild charm, these Austrian special disciplines, carry many of the Austrian novels that have already appeared this year (such as “Einsteins Hirn” by Franzobel) or will do so in the next few weeks (“Real Age” by Tonio Schachinger). In “Cooking in the Wrong Century”, Teresa Präauer defines why Austrians write:
“It’s cutting open through language and showing off with language, but also salvation through language, because life becomes more bearable when you find the right words.”
Book quote – “Cooking in the wrong century”
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