Walter Kappacher received the Georg Büchner Prize 2009! 10 days in the life of Hugo von Hofmannsthal: an ageing author returns to the place of his childhood.

August 1924: It is rather embarrassment why the elderly writer H. returns to a place from his childhood – Fusch, a spa in the midst of Salzburg’s mountains where he had spent summer after summer with his parents when he was growing up. A lot has changed in the meanwhile: friendships have grown apart, his fame dates back several years and his work is endangered by his impaired health and the slightest disturbances. The change of time after the war has found its way even into the life in remote Fusch and H., who became a stranger to himself, participates only in observing. During a walk H. becomes unconscious. Awaking, he gets to know young Doctor Krakauer, a duchess’ physician in private practice. He too is a repatriate in a foreign world. H. seeks to gain his friendship, but still there is the duchess and still there is a loneliness he cannot escape from. Walter Kappacher tells from a life, which has been overtaken by the time. He tells with captivating intensity and with lucid empathy, as competent as virtuosic. He confirms his special position in the german-speaking literature: “a rare one” (Peter Handke).

Erika Pluhar describes a man’s journey into finding himself.

Emil Windhacker is a man in the prime of life. Career oriented, sporty, always in good company, he enjoys his life to the full. But a medical test result and a feeling of weakness and failure that is new to him get him thinking. Is this diagnosis his death sentence? When Emil meets actress Marie Liebner, events follow in rapid succession … Erika Pluhar describes three days in the life of a man. From Emil's subjective perspective, Pluhar draws an accurate picture of the male view on Life’s major themes of love, illness and death. Pluhar’s tale of eventual self-discovery is poetic, humorous, tightly narrated and deeply moving.

Die Neuauflage der beliebten Winter- und Weihnachtsgeschichten. Das Kultbuch für alle Brandstetter-Fans.

»Alle Jahre wieder …«, so beginnt eines unserer geläufigsten Weihnachtslieder, und es liegt gewiß etwas Beruhigendes in dieser gleichbleibenden Wiederkehr. Und doch ist kein Jahr wie das andere, und wenn die Adventszeit naht, wenn es draußen kalt und in der Stube geheizt ist, dann rückt man wohl so manches Mal mit der Familie und guten Freunden zusammen und erinnert sich gegenseitig an Geschichten und Begebenheiten. Sie liegen vielleicht schon lang zurück, aber sind im Gedächtnis geblieben, weil sie für die Erwachsenen etwas Besonderes oder für die Kinder etwas Neues waren. Da mischt sich dann oft Behagliches mit Bewahrtem. Solcherart sind auch die Geschichten, die Alois Brandstetter in diesem Buch erzählt. Es sind Erinnerungen an die Winter und Weihnachtsfeste seiner Jugend, die er in dem kleinen Ort Pichl in Oberösterreich verbracht hat in den Jahren nach dem großen Krieg und der bösen Herrschaft. Aber ob Brandstetter vom Eisstockschießen, vom Sternsingen oder von frühen Skiversuchen berichtet, vom ersten Radioapparat oder von einer großen Überschwemmung, er tut es erfrischend unsentimental und immer detailfreudig und genau. Wenn volkstümliche Erzählliteratur über Weihnachten heute noch möglich ist, dann so.

Warum gehen alle Schiffe irgendwann unter? Warum geht immer alles schief? Und warum hat einer, den kein Schwein kennt, überall seine Finger im Spiel?

Why do all boats founder at a certain point? Why does everything go wrong? And why does somebody whom not a soul knows have everywhere a finger in the pie? This pet shop keeper, the guy from next door: He is everywhere and nowhere at home, lives with a golden hamster (thus almost alone), is inconspicuous like a turtle and keeps aloof from people. He only gets in touch with water on and off, then there is a lot of action: assassinations, natural disasters, und permanently there are boats foundering somewhere. Small ones, big ones, the Titanic, with all hands. And always there is our pet shop keeper involved, has above all always already been there and knows too much. A person who doesn’t think of anything evil (of course!), but is he therefore one of us? Or maybe rather God and the devil and everybody’s fate? Michael Stavaric is surfing through the centuries, back and forth, is landing in other eras and is in one phrase back in the present. He brings us news, comfort and warning: universal flux, even the stones, but also the devil never sleeps. History for Michael Stavaric consists of stories, but thousands of them – ones that you haven’t yet heard that way. This is about everything, from the very beginning... until the end, that won’t be a happy one, but neither a bitter one.

The ideal introduction into the wonderful fantastical world of Fritz von Herzmanovsky-Orlando: short, quaint, classical, funny!

The world of Fritz von Herzmanovsky-Orlando is a cabinet of curiosities, a scrapbook of the strange, a sheet of pictures of the bizarre. It is populated by figures rather than by human beings – by exemplars, forms and spawns. What occurs to him is not necessarily unusual. What he describes is caricature. In fine, his world resembles a strange zoo: Come in, have a look! You will be surprised if you suddenly face yourself. Volume 2 of the “concentrated edition” contains a selection of narratives and short pieces of prose. Many of them belong to Herzmanovsky’s most popular works and have long been classics: “The commandant of Kalymnos”, “Apoll of Nothing”, “Uncle Toni’s muffed Christmas Eve”, “The Sausage Machine” and many more. Here you have the world of Herzmanovsky-Orlando on a small scale, a bird cage: Look forward to Father Kniakal, Cavaliere Huscher and Chinesius von Schluck!

Vom Hundeausführer zum Millionär, vom Millionär zum Aussteiger: Zwei Brüder aus Bulgarien suchen ihr Glück in Amerika und finden immerhin die Asche ihres Vaters.

From dog walker to millionaire, from millionaire to dropout: two brothers from Bulgaria seek their fortune in America and, at least, find their father's ashes. A small black box full of ashes is all that Ned and Ango, two very different brothers from Bulgaria, have left of their father. It has been 15 years since their father, a mathematician hovering between genius and madness, died under mysterious circumstances in America as a visiting professor. Meanwhile, both of the two sons lead their own lives and their father has long been nothing more than a ghost. Until the paths of the two brothers cross, far from their homeland, in New York. Ned, the good-for-nothing, has made it to the top on Wall Street while Ango, the smart one, walks dogs for snobs in Central Park. But then the tide turns and the ghost of their father suddenly comes to life once more. Or at least more than both of them are comfortable with… Alek Popov does away with old fairytales. His new novel was at number one for weeks in the bestseller lists in Bulgaria. It is a satire of gold diggers in the West and the East, of the yearning for happiness shared by successful people and underdogs, and of the wrong impressions we immediately form of each other when a world divides us. East or West, top or bottom, dead or alive: let us be brothers! Racy, witty and damned biting. Woof!

Die Geschichte einer Frau so verletzlich wie tough, so smart wie fies. Platz 4 der ORF Bestenliste im April

Elisa has one passion: empty apartments. The fact that she is a real estate agent presents only a limited accommodation to her infatuation, as during the day she is always busy finding people that fill up her apartments. But at night she is in her element, behind the doors that shut life out: there she feels safe. Until one apartment after the other is afflicted by an arsonist and goes up in flames. Georg, the investigating officer, is in the dark. And what is even worse, he soon catches fire himself, and is burning with love for Elisa. To make matters worse unsolved cases of murder from her childhood suddenly emerge together with Georg. Why can’t she remember anything? Would her mother know more? All sorts of things happen, and yet Elisa can’t get rid of the notion that actually nothing is happening at all. Her daily routine is the only thing that keeps her going – all too often too fast – and there is always the fear that one day she might stop breathing because she could simply have forgotten… Michael Stavarič writes two whodunits in one – and more than that: intriguingly he tells of an irresistible woman. His language is rhythmical, poetic and vibrant. Elisa, the monster, the saint. A woman whom one wishes in the end: live, damn it. Breathe!

The loved one, the brother, the friend – three intense relationships, three farewells. Farewells that stand for liberation and restart at the same time.

What remains from a great love? How do we observe its end? Three removal boxes mark the point at which two people abruptly drift apart. One train ticket away from each other. The way the first-person narrator once started to love Srećko she also stops – at least for the moment. Or: How do we look back on a difficult past without deep hurt? Beograd, the white city, provides refuge and leads into a space without memories in which the puppeteer can reinvent her own history. In front of the bullet holes of a forgetful city. Or: What distinguishes love from friendship? Rita is on her way to America and Paul gazes for a whole night over the ocean that separates them. The next morning he will call Maria and – maybe – find a new present. Profoundly and seriously Milena Michiko Flašar tells from narrow relationships and being in search for oneself. Her prose stands out by the maelstrom of its language. It leads us into a world full of visible and invisible signs. An exciting debut.

“As if the sea wanted to give birth to another sea.”

Eloquent and with fine irony Julian Schutting attends to the great topics of literature: What turns a poem into a poem, how to treat political topics without slipping into humanitarian banalities, and how to nowadays still write nature poems? “To the moon” is the exemplary summarisation of Schutting’s poetry. Against every prevailing trend he sings the praises of Orphelia’s waterbed, refers to Schiller’s Nenia and makes songs rush through raging seas. In refined compositions, Julian Schutting’s poems carry us away into a world that is in dept to Enlightenment, to sensuality and delight for language. This bow to poetry results on its part in great poetry, and to the one who gets into it, the power of the word opens up. But he isn’t too serious about it, and so one can allow to be fooled with pleasure.

Two sisters and their good-bye of a mother who eludes her children and their demands until the end of her life.

Xenia is a painter. When she gets a scholarship and is invited to Rome, she sees her chance to no longer live in the shadow as an artist. Xenia has just arrived in Rome when she receives a call by her sister from her homeland: Their mother, a famous writer, has collapsed at a lecture and is in a coma. The mother for whom her own prestige has always been more important than her family, her art more important than her children: Because of her Xenia shall travel back, turn down the chance to assert herself – not least towards the mother? The mother’s silence and death and her own distance force Xenia to grapple with her childhood, with her mother’s egoism and not least with her own art – the egoism of the daughter. Xenia stays: because of her mother who is unreachable for her approaches, and because of Alma, the photographer, who disappears in a mysterious way; also she, without saying good-bye. Evelyn Grill is unmistakable: sober-minded, lapidary, without sentimentality. Evelyn Grill is endowed with the ability to draft lives with all their inherent ambivalence. (...) Beyond the fascination (...) terrifying biographies appear that are revealed with masterful precision by the narrow novel. Alongside the row of memorable characters (...) Evelyn Grill designs a Rome that sparkles with life and art (...). FAZ, Andreas Platthaus Even though it is more psychological than her last novels, "The Roman Light" is still typical of Grill: Clear language is combined with complex construction; the motives are artfully interwoven, and, likewise, ironically undermined. FALTER, Kirstin Breitenfellner