New books in our collection

Muslime in Oesterreich
Geschichte, Lebenswelt, Religion, Grundlagen fuer den Dialog

Edited by Susanne Heine, Ruediger Lohlker and Richard Potz.

Jelinek [Jahr] Buch

We have recently acquired three volumes of the Jelinek Jahrbuch from 2010, 2011, 2012 produced by the Elfriede Jelinek Forschungszentrum (Research Centre).

The Mattress House
Paulus Hochgatterer

Full of unease and tension, The Mattress House tackles sensitive subjects with finesse and great delicacy. This is another brilliantly accomplished psychological crime novel by the author of The Sweetness of Life, winner of the European Literature Prize 2009, who is regarded by many as one of the most talented writers of his generation.

We have recently acquired several new books by the Austrian writer and historian Doron Rabinovici:

Eichmann's Jews
The Jewish Administration of Holocaust Vienna, 1938-1945

This book is a major new study of the role of the Jews, and more specifically the 'Judenrat'' or Jewish Council, in Holocaust Vienna. Drawing on reently discovered archives and extensive interviews, Doron Rabinovici explores in details the actions of individual Jews and Jewish organisations.

Instanzen der Ohnmacht
Wien 1938-1945, Der Weg zum Judenrat

In dieser Arbeit wird versucht, die Situation der Wiener juedischen Funktionaere unter nationalsozialistischer Herrschaft nachzuvollziehen. Die Perspektive der Verfolgten offenbart, wie unfassbar und wie widersinnig all das erscheinen musste, was ihnen angetan wurde. Ihre verzweifelten Hoffnungen und ihre Ohnmacht spiegeln das Ausmass und den Charakter des Verbrechens wider.

Suche nach M.

Halb kriminal-halb surreal erzahelt Doron Rabinovicis Roman die phantastische-reale Geschichte von Dani Morgenthau und Arich Scheinowitz, den Soehnen juedischer Ueberlebender aus Krakau.

Andernots

Wo kann das Leben gelingen: in Wien, in Tel Aviv - oder nur andernorts? Ein bewegender Roman ueber Familie und Zugehoerigkeit und die packende Geschichte zweier Maenner, die sich yum Verwechseln aehnlich sind und doch unterschiedlicher nicht sein koennten.

Ohnehin

Rabinovici erzahelt von Liebe, Verlust, von Moral und Geschichte, vom Zusammenleben der Menschen unterschiedlicher Herkunft, den Misverstendnissen, absichtlicher und versehenlicher Grausamkeit, den Traurigkeiten des Erinnerns und der Verzwiflung des Vergessens... Am liebsten moechte man alle Szenen und Geschichten erzaehlen.

A Companion to Michael Haneke
Edited by Roy Grundman

This is the definitive collection of newly commissioned works exploring Haneke's work in its entirety. The volume brings together essays by some of the foremost scholars in film studies as well as interviews with the director himself.

Sprachrausch und Sprachverlust

Essays zur oesterreichischen Literatur von Hoffmannsthal bis Mayroecker
by Ruediger Goerner

Alois Hotschnig various works

We have recently added a selection of works by Alois Hotschnig to our Library collection. These include:
Ludwigs Zimmer
Im Sitzen laeuft es sich besser davon (Erzaehlungen)
Leonardos Haende
Absolution
Die Kinder begruhigte das nicht

Schwestern der Angst
by Lydia Mischkulnig

Ich tat alles fuer Marie, obwohl mir weder Anerkennung noch Verstaendnis gegoennt war. Vielleicht trieb mich weniger die Ueberzeugung, sie zu Belehren, als Auflehnung gegen den Satz: Missbrauch gehoert zu unseren Leben wie das Amen zum Gebet.

Eine fatale Schwesternbeziehung - spannend wie ein Thriller und mit psychologischer Tiefe erzaehlt.

Rueckkehr nach Wien (Return to Vienna)
The Diary of Hilde Spiel

In 1936, Hilde Spiel (1911-1990), later to be known as the ‘grande dame of Austrian literature’, left Vienna to start a new life in London. Ten years later she returned to her native city in British army uniform as a correspondent for the New Statesman. She recorded her thoughts and impressions in a journal, which she later reworked and expanded. It was published in Germany in 1968, and in 2011, Hilde Spiel’s centenary year, Ariadne Press have published a new English version prepared by her daughter, Christine Shuttleworth. It is both an important historical document and a personal account of a much-loved city ravaged and transformed by war, of its intellectuals, politicians and everyday people, seen by the sensitive eye of a woman caught between two worlds, neither of which any longer seemed entirely hers.

Herznovelle
by Julya Rabinowich

Trausequenzen wechseln mit lyrischen Passagen in diesem furiosen Text ueber die ganz grosse Sehnsucht nach einem Leben vor dem Tod. In der deutschsprachigen Literatur der Gegenwart is Julya Rabinowich eine neue Stimme, die aufhorchen laesst.

Invasionen des Privaten
by Anna Kim

Ich weiss endlich, warum Groenland fuer mich immer schon mehr ein Gefuehl war als ein Ort, genauer gesagt, ein Ort, von dem ich schon immer wusste, dass sich dieses Gefuehl, eine Mischung aus Fernweh und Heimweh, Sehnsucht und Freiheit, und in diesem Moment erinnere ich mich gelesen zu haben, das Inlandeis sei der Ort, den die Inuit mieden, um jeden Preis: es war der Lebensraum der Daemonen und Monster.

Stravinsky the Music-Maker. Writings, Prints and Drawings
by Hans Keller and Milein Cosman

Hans Keller and Milein Cosman collaborated down the decades of the married life, Keller's pen analysing music, Cosman's catching its makers at work. Stravisnsky was a source of fascination for them both, and their Stravinsky at Rehearsal appearied in 1982, to be expanded two decades later, as Stravinsky Seen and Heard. Stravinsky the Music=Maker offers the most generous compilation of their work yet: it includes Keller's complete articles on Stravinsky, written between 1948 and 1983, and augments Cosman's celebrated prints and drawings with a number not previously published. The introduction, by the composer Hugh Wood, sites the Keller-Cosman partnership in the framework of the British musical life they enriched.

Stefan Zweig - Journeys

This is the first English translation of Zweig’s writings on his travels in Europe. Representing a lifetime’s observations, this collection paints a rich and sensitive picture of Europe before the Second World War. For the insatiably curious Zweig, travel was both a necessary cultural education and a personal balm for the depression he experienced when rooted in one place for too long. He spent much of his life weaving between the countries of Central Europe, visiting authors and friends, exploring the continent in the heyday of international rail travel.

am i a redundant human being?
by Mela Hartwig

For the first time in English, a contemporary and friend of Virginia Woolf and Stefan Zweig gives us the definitive portrait of a woman lost on the margins of modern life. In this remarkable book, published by Dalkey Archive Press, Mela Hartwig presents Aloisia Schmidt - an ordinary secretary with a burning question: am I a redundant human being? She’s neither pretty nor ugly (though she wishes she were hideous: at least that would be something), has no imagination, and is forced to live vicariously through “borrowed” fantasy - from books, plays, even other people’s lives. She loves to hate herself, and loves for other people to hate her too. In one final, guilt-ridden, masturbatory, self-obsessed confession, Aloisia indulges her masochistic tendencies to the fullest, putting her entire life on trial, and trying, through telling her story (a story, she assures us, that’s “so laughably mundane” it’s really no story at all), to transform an ordinary life into something extraordinary.

Mela Hartwig was born in 1893 in Vienna, where she went on to have a successful career as an actress. After marrying, Hartwig left the stage and turned her hand to writing, where she developed a name for herself as a modernist and feminist. In 1938, Hartwig and her husband immigrated to London, where she befriended Virginia Woolf. She died in London in 1967.