Product Description

Although in the second half of the 20th century, a large number of exceptional writers emerged from the Austrian Republic, their relationship to the cultural mainstream was stormy: Thomas Bernhard went so far as to refuse to allow his plays to be performed in Austria after his death. This collection is an excellent opportunity to sample a rich literature that remains central to European culture. Contributors: H.C. Artmann, Ingeborg Bachman, Konrad Bayer, Thomas Bernhard, Heimito von Doderer, Lillian Faschinger, Antonio Fian, Erich Fried, Peter Handke, Peter Henisch, Elfriede Jelinek, Gert Jonke, Werner Kofler, Alfred Kolleritsch, Meta Merz, Georg Pichler, Elisabeth Reichart, Doron Rabinovici, Robert Schindel, Sabine Scholl, Margit Schreiner, Brigitte Schwaiger

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1439582 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Maya Jaggi, Guardian
'There is much to admire in this collection, a plethora of exceptional writers, a wealth of experimental prose’

About the Author
Martin Chalmers is a writer, editor and translator. He has translated novels and short story collections by Erich Fried, Ernst Weiss, Herta Muller, Hubert Fichte, and Bertolt Brecht.

Customer Reviews

Sadly Lacking...
This anthology of short fiction from Austria consists of stories and novel excerpts from 22 writers published in German between 1963 and 1995. In that regard I suppose it's a fair sampling of postwar Austrian literature, but what I had not expected was that this sampling would be so numbingly boring. As the majority authors represented were born during or soon after WWII, I shouldn't have been so surprised that the war and guilt are recurring themes, even in stories written in the '90s. While understand that the Austrian collaboration (Anschluss) with the Nazis is a scar in the national psyche, I suspect that those with more intimate knowledge of Austria may be able to tease a little more meaning out of the stories than I was able to.

Meaning and theme aside, too many of the stories are just flat out boring. I did more or less like Heimito von Doderer's "Beneath Black Stars", narrated by a Luftwaffe officer. I very much enjoyed Hans Carl Artmann's "Blind Chance and Roast Duck", which is a brief comic farce about three gentlemen who have gambled their money away. Peter Henisch's "Brutal Curiosity" appears to be a somewhat autobiographical account of his dying father's experience as a combat photographer in WWII which reads rather well. Gert Jonke's "The Bridge" comes close to being something quite interesting, and Peter Handke's two page sketches aren't bad. The remainder of the stories utterly failed to connect with me, mostly for stylistic reasons. In many cases the writing seemed incredibly stiff, while in others, experimentation runs amok.

I had hoped to emerge from this anthology with a sense of Austria beyond the standard Vienna, Mozart, classical view, with a gritty glimpse into the more real modern Austria. These stories more or less try to do that in a variety of ways, but ultimately fail. Rather than show what's going on now, the authors are more interested in deconstructing myths of the past.