Gert Jonke

Varma och kalla bad utspelas i ett land som besväras av det förflutna. Av det Habsburgska riket, kejsardömet mitt i Europa, återstår det betydligt mindre Österrike. Namnen på de författare som kommer till tals vittnar dels om ett slaviskt, dels om ett tyskt eller tyskjudiskt ursprung, även om alla skriver på tyska. I Varma och kalla bad medverkar flera generationer författare som berättar om sina personliga upplevelser av kriget och nazismen, men här skildras också samtiden. Alltifrån valutareformer till hembygds-berättelser, kvinnlig frigörelse och lyriska kärleksförklaringar gör antologin till ett både roande och tankeväckande nedslag i dagens österrikiska samhälle och litteratur.

A composer who has already given up composing - because of his inability to notate the music of the spheres - becomes increasingly fixated on capturing a mysterious, eerie, distant sound, which he soon equates with all the things he desires most: the perfect woman, the perfect city, the perfect work of art. Obsessed with his impossible quest, the man breaks out of the asylum and begins a series of comic, dreamlike, and ultimately haunting adventures as he tries to locate the source of the sound that consumes him... and instead finds the root cause of all his failures.

Half philosopher and half clown-prince, Gert Jonke is Austria s comic gift to contemporary fiction.

Gert Jonke’s prose ripples along like a piano étude, transcending its meticulously constructed sequences to transport the reader into an imaginary world. With a delightful combination of the ridiculous and the sublime, Jonke explores surreal dimensions of space and sound, always anchoring his flights of fancy in accessible imagery. More than any other author, Jonke, a pianist turned writer, avails himself of compositional techniques from classical music. Different characters sound their own themes in cleverly orchestrated conversations. Opening observations are restated at the end by another character instead of in another key. Not surprisingly, the first-person narrator is a composer, a young man who is all the more likeable for his difficulties: his missing girlfriend and his withdrawal symptoms. The title is taken from a collection of studies by Carl Czerny; the content is a literary tour de force.

An innovative satire on the process by which bureaucracy and official regimentation insidiously pervade society. In a deadpan, pseudo-scientific tone, the nameless narrator takes us on a tour of a bizarre village whose inhabitants lead such habitual, regulated lives that they resemble elements in a mathematical equation.