Michael Stavarič came to Austria as a seven-year-old child from the then neighbouring Czechoslovakia. The Stavarič family’s original plan was…
The Austrian Riveter
I am in the Notting Hill Bookshop, when it existed, talking with the late Sheila Ramage, to whom in retrospect…
Laura Freudenthaler is a master of concision and understatement. In her fiction, silence and words unsaid play a central role,…
Contemporary Austrian literature is perhaps most famous – or, rather, infamous – for its tradition of Nestbeschmutzer (fouling its own…
When Ruth Schwarz’s parents are killed in a car crash, it is only the first of many shocks. The second…
Compelling, fast-paced and self-aware, Doris Knecht’s The Message is a deftly told novel by a writer at the top of…