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.

History of theatre is the history of an excitement that doesn’t want to end.

Theatre without scandals? Unthinkable! From Aischylos’ “Orestie”, the excitement about what’s to be seen on stage is part of the incalculable and sometimes calculated attraction of theatre. Up to today, until Rolf Hochhuth’s “Stellvertreter” or Thomas Bernhard’s “Heldenplatz”, pieces and productions have consistently made scandals. They provoked, aroused, or simply disturbed the comfortable boredom; they revolutionised theatre or died away without any effect like the screams at the first tier; they came surprisingly and violently or were produced and played up by the media; because of political contents or aesthetic border crossings they made for outrage and distraction – and frequently a behaviour of the public that to date one thought to known only from beer tents. An unbeatable cultural report through the long and loud history of theatre scandals: with analyses of the phenomenon, with swansongs to an old tradition, with interviews and anecdotes, with critics and examples of stage works at which not only the doors banged.

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 erste Bedingung, dass Du etwas in Dein Herz und Deinen Kopf bringst, ist, dass Du etwas in Deinen Magen bringst." Ludwig Feuerbach

The one who is thinking a lot has to eat a lot, too. One thing is for sure: A slow metabolism attests mental lazyness! “Primum vivere, deinde philosophare”: First living, then philosophy. Freely adapted from Schopenhauer, this book follows philosophers through everyday life, to the place where it is most surprising and tasteful: to the dinner table. Out of letters, diary entries and side chapters of their main opus, the favourite dishes and the often obscure dinner rituals of the great thinkers are reconstructed. We accompany them on their culinary journeys through Europe and watch how nutrition left its marks in their philosophy or even influenced it significantly. You think like Nietzsche? Then why not eat like he did! Invite for a dinner marked by your favourite philosopher and amuse yourself at his favourite music with funny culinary anecdotes. Jean Anthèlme Brillat-Savarin, Ludwig Feuerbach, Immanuel Kant, Sören Kirkegaard, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, F. T. Marinetti, Michel de Montaigne, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Carl Friedrich von Rumohr, Jean Paul Satre, Arthur Schopenhauer.

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.

Die erstmals entzifferten persönlichen Aufzeichnungen Alban Bergs offenbaren ein vielschichtiges Sittenbild des Wiener Großbürgertums nach der Jahrhundertwende.

The for the first time deciphered personal notes by Alban Berg give a multilayer genre picture of the Viennese bourgeoisie after the turn of the century. Alban Berg was undoubtedly the master of the Viennese musical modernity. Herwig Knaus tabulated and deciphered thousands of notes and letter drafts of Berg’s unpublished works. This unique biography which offers a new and authentic view at the artist emerged out of it. The until now available sources that where sometimes heavily censured by his wife Helene Nahowski gave only a directed view at the composer. Many aspects of Alban Berg’s biography were left out: his difficulties with his own family and his lesbian sister, the economical troubles resulting from the war- and postwar period, his relation to women, collegues, and – seen in the background of the traditional Viennese anti-Semitism – his relation to his teacher Arnold Schönberg. Out of those unvarnished insights into Alban Berg’s private life not only a very vivid portrait of this musical rebel emerges but also an exciting genre picture of the period after the break-down of the Danube Monarchy.

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

The story doesn’t get rid of its monsters. The story of a man who tries to messure the value of life, and masses die.

Hitler is in power, but not yet in his homeland. There, people are waiting to “come home” to the empire, some full of hope, some full of fear. Stackler is nobody who likes to wait, and above all he doesn’t know fear. The “illegal” Nazi gets prepared for his time of glory: Stackler, in the position of the head of the institute for racial research, wants to create the new man, wants to care for pure blood at university, to wipe out. The fact that “Miss March”, who doesn’t only assist him in scientific concerns, makes him a father of an illegitimate child is thereby very inconvenient. But what for does somebody like Stackler know the value of life... “May I introduce myself, Professor Stackler, physiologist.” A person who introduces himself in such a dynamic and snappy way knows before all the others what’s happening, and he goose-steps ahead: up the job ladder, from one empire to the next, from one republic to the next and always sticking at nothing. In the heart of the heart of the darkness: Max Blaeulich completes his trilogy about the wild Europe – an opus that can’t be compared to anything in German literature: pitiless, keen, radical.