Forthcoming Titles

Translations

Modern Austrian Prose. Interpretations and Insights. Volume II

Edited and Introduced by Paul F. Dvorak

Volume II continues the process of introducing readers to significant works of modern Austrian prose within the broader field of German-language literature. Written in English with German reference material appended in order to appeal to the widest possible audience, the articles collected here cover major works by eighteen contemporary writers. Counted among the well-established authors who could not be included in the first volume are such notable writers as Norbert Gstrein, Julian Schutting, Elisabeth Reichart, Erich Hackl, Barbara Frischmuth, Gert Jonke, and Alois Brandstetter. This group is complemented by a cohort of more recent authors who have established themselves within Austria and beyond within the last twenty years. They include Doron Rabinovici, Lilian Faschinger, Gloria Kaiser, Anna Mitgutsch, Paulus Hochgatterer, Marlene Streeruwitz, Evelyn Schlag, Kathrin Röggla, Thomas Glavinic, Dimitre Dinev, and Daniel Kehlmann. All of these authors are linked by language, history, and culture that ties them to a distinctly “Austrian” perspective. Reflecting the strong presence of the female voice within contemporary Austrian letters, almost half of the authors represented are female.  

Contributors to the volume are highly respected scholars within the fields of Austrian and German studies both in the United States and abroad. Almost all of the works discussed are presently available in English translation with several translations presently underway. In sum, the authors, works, and contributors’ commentary on them reflect the richness and diversity of the Austrian tradition. 

PAUL F. DVORAK is Professor of German at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. He has lived and studied extensively in Austria and devotes the majority of his research and scholarship to Austrian studies. He has written about and translated such authors as Arthur Schnitzler, Franz Kafka, Peter Henisch, Robert Schneider, Alfred Kolleritsch, and Alois Brandstetter.

2011
ISBN 978-1-57241-161-6

We Are Doing Fine

By Arno Geiger

Translated by: Maria Poglitsch Bauer

Cover Design: Beth A. Steffel

We read to explore the unknown, but also to recognize ourselves in others. Arno Geiger’s We Are Doing Fine offers both pleasures, and not only to English-speaking readers. The fourth novel (winner of the German Book Prize 2005) of the 1968- born Austrian writer highlights events in the lives of three generations of a Viennese family as viewed through the eyes of Philipp, who has inherited the villa of his recently deceased grandmother. In 2001, while cleaning – no, gutting – the house and ridding it of most reminders of its former occupants, the grandson is forced to think about his family more than is to his liking.

In a brilliantly spare and precise language, Geiger mixes crucial incidents of Austrian history with both everyday and tragic occurrences in the family’s private lives. His ear for and empathy with the characters, particularly the women in the story, is exceptional. A dysfunctional family emerges and is even more poignant because the specific Austrian background only makes the universal in such families more apparent.

Philipp is following family tradition, when he tries to make clear to his married girlfriend that he neither knows much nor wants to find out more about his family. This is the crux of We Are Doing Fine and the reason why it has more than regional appeal. Austrians have sometimes been accused of having a selective memory, of an aptitude to gloss over uncomfortable truths, and of a penchant for appearances. Geiger’s characters display all of these characteristics to various degrees, but one cannot help but notice that such shortcomings are by now shared by most of society as we know it. Maybe one only can make it through the day when one surfs the surface and when one uses a pat response to all inquiries about one’s general state of being: “We are doing fine.”

2010
ISBN: 978-1-57241-170-8

 The Others’ Austria. Impressions of American and British Travelers. Volume Two: 1919-2007

Edited by Horst and Lois Jarka

Cover Design: Beth A. Steffel

In the first half of the twentieth century, foreign visitors were witnesses to Austria’s dramatic history between the two World Wars. Political, and social issues often overshadowed the country’s traditional attractions, [BJ1] which had made it a travel destination in the preceding century. With the country’s independence in 1955,[BJ2] travelers were again lured by its scenic splendor, though ethically aware travelers were often painfully reminded of Austria’s Nazi past.

As in Volume I, the editors present excerpts from material usually not included in travel anthologies: memoirs, journalism, and creative works inspired by experiences in Austria. They convincingly document the striking neglect of Austria in major travel anthologies.The longoverdue correction of this oversight makes this book, like Volume I, a pioneering achievement in travel research. That there is no other anthology focused on Austria is all the more baffling as the sixty authors in this collection include some of the best known names in American and British literature: novelists, poets, and playwrights W. H. Auden, John Dos Passos, Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway, John Irving, Arthur Miller, Stephen Spender, and Thomas Wolfe; critics Alfred Kazin and F. O. Matthiessen; journalists G.E.R. Gedye and John Gunther; world travelers Bruce Chatwin, Patrick Lee Fermor, and Jan Morris; and mountaineers Arnold Lunn and Frank Smythe.

Although political and social issues were often foremost in foreigners’ impressions, the editors also discovered humorous sketches, exciting adventures, idyllic country scenes, unusual ways of traveling, and everyday experiences of farm life participated in by travelers. This colorful spectrum, oscillating between criticism, empathy, and affection for Austria, recorded by excellent writers, is as thought provoking as it is a pleasure to read. It is meant for readers who know or want to get to know Austria;for cultural, social, and political historians of Central Europe; and for armchair travelers venturing beyond guidebooks

2011
ISBN: 978-1-57241-174-6

Frozen Time

Anna Kim

Translated and with an Afterword by Michael Mitchell

Cover Design: Beth A. Steffel

The narrator of Anna Kim’s novel Frozen Time is a relatively inexperienced researcher working for the Red Cross agency that assists people from the former Yugoslavia in their search for lost relatives. As she helps a man from Kosovo whose wife disappeared during the war there, she is confronted with the gruesome results of the work of forensic archaeologists, medics and anthropologists. She is gradually drawn into the fate of her client on a more personal level and eventually accompanies him to Kosovo, where she sees the results of the conflict at first hand. But the documentary aspect is merely the surface of the novel. Beneath it Kim explores, through her narrator, the devastating effect of loss on those left behind, their helplessness as their lives continue in ‘frozen time’. 

The language of the novel moves from the precise, distancing objectivity of the ‘ante-mortem questionnaire’ (‘avoid feelings, look for facts’), to a powerful and often poetic language reflecting the narrator’s struggles to come to terms with her increasing personal involvement, to comprehend an experience which is so far beyond that of everyday life. In fact Kim’s language often seems to be asking ‘how can this be expressed in words’. 
This combination of fact and intense feeling makes Frozen Time a moving exploration of loss, of the search for closure.

2010
ISBN: 978-1-57241-172-2

Vienna Spring. Early Novellas and Stories

Stefan Zweig
Translated by William Ruleman
Cover Design: Beth A. Steffel

Set in Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century, these early works now published in English for the first time, show that from the beginning of his literary career, Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) was already a master of both the short story and his favored fictional form, the novella. In the shorter pieces, the upper-class intellectual Zweig renders with sympathy some of life’s outcasts: a “slow” student driven to violence; two ridiculed factory workers; a prostitute longing for love. Yet his keen perception and wry wit allow him to sidestep the sentimental and arrive at tender yet stark portrayals.

The two novellas here, “The Love of Erika Ewald” and “Scarlet Fever,” follow the travails of characters closer in temperament and upbringing to Zweig’s own. The first concerns a young pianist whose delicate nature interferes with her sensual fulfillment; the second, a gentle medical student struggling to adjust himself to the city’s harsh realities. In these portraits, Zweig presents a theme that would figure not only in his later fiction but also in his own life as a Jewish writer in the Nazi era: the plight of highly sensitive souls in a crude and uncaring world. Contents A Loser; Two Lonely Ones; The Love of Erika Ewald; Spring in the Prater; Scarlet Fever. 

2010
ISBN: 978-1-57241-173-9