Modern Austrian Prose Vol. II: Interpretations and Insights by Paul F. Dvorak (review)

The task of selecting authors for a volume of scholarly essays on contemporary Austrian literature will, for its editor, always be somewhat bittersweet. The richness of Austrian letters meant that for his first volume of Modern Austrian Prose, Paul F. Dvorak was spoiled for choice in focusing on a set of authors whose reputations have already spread well beyond the borders of Germanspeaking countries. The recently published second volume forms the ideal complement to its predecessor by presenting fifteen essays on authors whose reputations outside of Austria have not, as yet, equaled the impressive quality of their works. The volume laudably represents male and female authors in almost equal number and balances essays on established authors not included in volume 1 with contributions on authors who have emerged on the literary scene in recent years. In this way, Dvorak’s latest volume proves to be an ideal addition to the Modern Austrian Prose series.

As Dvorak describes in his preface, the current volume aims to acquaint Anglophone readers with key Austrian authors, and fully thirteen of the fifteen essays focus on a single major work that is already available in English. Interestingly, a number of the contributors are themselves the translators of the works they discuss: Francis Michael Sharp discusses Doron Rabinovici’s The Search for M, Todd C. Hanlin summarizes his translation of Caretta Caretta and Paulus Hochgatterer’s other adolescent novels, while Rebecca S. Thomas introduces Kathrin Röggla’s Wir schlafen nicht. These essays clearly benefit from the translator’s intimate knowledge of each respective text. The same can be said of Vincent Kling’s essay on Gert Jonke’s Geometric Regional Novel. Kling’s recent excellent translation of Jonke’s The System of Vienna: From Heaven Street to Earth Mound Square serves as the background to a thoughtful essay on an author who deserves a much greater readership.

The first six essays cohere thematically through their engagement with the ever-present question of Austria’s role in World War II and the (mis-)understanding of this role in shaping postwar national identity. To varying degrees these essays take the Moscow Declaration of 1943 as their point of departure and explore the powerful afterlife of the victim/perpetrator contradiction in postwar Austria. Felix Tweraser’s essay on Elisabeth Reichart’s Februarschatten provides the historical background for understanding the Mühlviertler Hasenjagd, which Reichart’s novel adopts as its central topic. Geoffery Howes’s essay on Erich Hackl’s Abschied von Sidonie and Cynthia Klima’s on Norbert Gstrein’s Das Register describe novels that interrogate the crimes perpetrated by Austrians after the Anschluss and that address the familial fragmentation occasioned by the active forgetting of these crimes after Austria’s “liberation” from Nazi rule.

Francis Michael Sharp’s contribution on Doron Rabinovici and Maria-Regina Kecht’s on Anna Mitgutsch’s Haus der Kindheit draw on this same background to explain how the belief that all Austrians were victims of Nazi aggression prohibited real recognition of Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Kecht discusses the tradition of the Yizker Bikher, the remembrance or memorial texts written by survivors to bear witness to the world destroyed during the Holocaust. Kecht presents a compelling reading of Mitgutsch’s Haus der Kindheit as just such a novel of remembrance and as a “book of the dead.”

The final section of the book concentrates on authors such as Daniel Kehlmann, Kathrin Röggla, and Dimitré Dinev, who have established themselves in recent years. Ronald Horwege offers a clear summary of the “outsider” figures in all of Daniel Kehlmann’s novels before exploring his bestseller Die Vermessung der Welt at length. Interestingly, Kehlmann’s works share with Gloria Kaiser’s Dona Leopoldina, discussed by Donald Daviau, a penchant for mining earlier historical periods for compelling characters: While the essays on Barbara Frischmuth, Elisabeth Reichart, and Erich Hackl describe literary interrogations of real historical events designed to uncover lingering cultural blind spots, Kehlmann and Kaiser use relatively “safe...