Maja Haderlap grew up in the border region of Carinthia in the south of Austria, a member of the Slovenian minority. The baggage that comes from growing up traumatised with inherit
Laura Freudenthaler is a master of concision and understatement. In her fiction, silence and words unsaid play a central role, being both weapons of self-defence, particularly for
Contemporary Austrian literature is perhaps most famous – or, rather, infamous – for its tradition of Nestbeschmutzer (fouling its own nest) and anti-Heimat writing from the pe
In his novellas, short stories, plays and novels Alois Hotschnig has plumbed dark corners of the psyche. In elegantly cadenced prose, his eight books have explored the burdens of h
Karl-Markus Gauß is the foremost literary cartographer of a vanishing Europe. His wide-ranging and incisive essays chronicle the diversity and wealth of languages and cultures, pr
Lutz Seiler’s Kruso takes us back to the last breaths of a political simulacrum: the Soviet-controlled part of Germany called the ‘German Democratic Republic’. I had the chan
Born in Scuol in 1944, Leta Semadeni writes concise, luminous poetry in both German and the Vallader dialect of Romansh. She is equally at home in, and slightly removed from, both
Fleur Jaeggy has been writing concise, unsettling works of fiction for four decades. Her haunting prose is all the more addictive for being doled out in slim portions. The publishe
As fast as a person walks When you suddenly google your first love, it’s in response to the sound of knocking you hear just before you fall asleep and hear even louder the moment
It takes a poet who lives amidst our daily clutter to see the near as something distant. With this vision, he hones his provocative craft, picking with bird-beak precision until he
