The New Scheherazade

The New Scheherazade (Die neue Scheherazade, Paul List Verlag, 1986) is Lilian Faschinger's first novel. As in the original Thousand and One Nights, Faschinger's narrator tells stories to escape death, if not literal death at the hands of a wrathful King Schahriar, then figurative death in the stifling existence of an Austrian wife. The novel, which Faschinger has called "my contribution to postmodernism," features her characteristic humor and treats many of the themes found in her later works: the latent fascism in Austrian society, the uses and misuses of psychoanalysis, and the role of the Catholic Church in the oppression of women, among others. The narrator, whose kinship with and distance from her literary ancestor are symbolized by her different-colored eyes (the legacy of an Austrian father and an Iranian mother), recounts adventures in which she and other fictional characters interact with "real," historical figures (such as the artist Christo, author Gertrude Stein, and actor Clint Eastwood) as well as with characters from movies or literary works, rock musicians, the narrator's own family and friends, and even cartoon characters. A self-interrupting narrative continually calls the narrator's authority into question. Scenes from everyday life suddenly merge with fairy tale motifs (Snow White, Bluebeard) or switch from narrative to drama. As the narrator comments (15), "...there is no significant difference between thought and deed, between imagination and reality." The excerpts included here are from the first few pages of the novel, where the narrator explains her situation and gives us her family history, and two later sections, one describing the first love of the narrator's Aunt Steffi (as she herself would have told it, had she ever done so), and the other imagining the artist Christo confined in an asylum for abnormal criminals. The narrator's musings on love take her to the confessional; the excerpt ends with a line that also occurs in Magdalena the Sinner (Magdalena Sünderin, 1995): "What do you mean by repent?"