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Austria

A row of violins

Photo by Umutcan Günüç on Unsplash

Strands

By Verena Rossbacher

He laid the hairs out in front of him on the kitchen table, stretched out straight and flat next to each other like the strings of an instrument.

Translated from German by Anne Posten

Razor Blade Rattle and the Beginnings of Being Tamed

By Ishraga Mustafa

How could they, when these women themselves had been through so much pain?

Translated from Arabic by Sawad Hussain

Multilingual

Beyond Representation: Life Writing by Women in Arabic

By Sawad Hussain & Nariman Youssef

One cannot write about real-life experiences from the place of the “I” without laying claim to a place in the world.

Framing the Story: Six Graphic Narratives

By Susan Harris

These artists capture both words and images to convey narratives individual and collective.

A Seam of Light and Black

By Moussa Kone, Walter Pamminger & Bastian Schneider

The outlooks and the insights need to be revised.

Translated by Verena Aschbacher

translation

By Maja Haderlap

here sentences must disrobe

Translated from German by Tess Lewis

The First Thing I Saw

By Karl-Markus Gauss

The first thing I saw when jolted from sleep was my father throwing books out of the window.

Translated from German by Tess Lewis

Heldenplatz

By Antonio Fian

The nerve. Everyone cheers for him on the Heldenplatz and then he goes and cuts deals with the Russians.

Translated from German by Tess Lewis

Getting Undressed, Yes, Getting Dressed, Too

By Alois Hotschnig

My Jacob still wants to be a cow.

Translated from German by Tess Lewis

when speech left me

By Maja Haderlap

my swollen tongue twitched / in my dry mouth.

Translated from German by Tess Lewis

The Reverberations of History: Contemporary Austrian Literature

The variety and exuberance of contemporary Austrian writing is little known among English readers.

Eternal Youth

By Robert Menasse

My father was horrified when I told him that I was getting married and that the date and place were already set.

Translated from German by Ross Benjamin

When Chaos Came to Salzburg

By Karl-Markus Gauss

Pentecost, the peaceful holiday, had come, and Salzburg was something akin to a city under a state of emergency.

Translated from German by John K. Cox

The End of Amsterdam’s Hunger Winter

By Robert Menasse

The ape brought us the food, Father said and added, after a pause, and a book.

From “Fever”

By Friedrich Glauser

The only sound to be heard in the little room was the snoring of the landlord interspersed with the quiet tick-tock of the clock on the wall...

Translated from German by Mike Mitchell

From “The Scent of Wheat”

By Zdenka Becker

What kind of part can a writer play in a war? Exactly the same one as during peace.

Translated from German by Eugene Sampson

A Report to an Academy

I feel honored by your invitation to present the academy with a report on my former life as an ape.

Translated from German by Philip Boehm

Viktoria Was Home All Alone

And the soil began to move and a beanstalk began to grow out of it. It grew and grew and grew, higher and higher.

Translated from German by John E. Woods

Games on the Banks of the Danube

My parents, who had been so inept as to be Jews, were already under arrest by then.

Translated from German by John K. Cox