Airy-Fairy

Franz Kafka not only wrote prose, he was also passionate about drawing: »Did you know I was once a great drawer,« he wrote about his artistic ambitions, half ironic, half proud, to his...

»Thomas Bernhard is born in Heerlen (the Netherlands) on February 9, 1931. The afterbirth has the shape of Austria.« – thus begins Bernhard’s biography as drawn by comic artist Nicolas Mahler.

The grand master of minimalism, who has previously and »congenially« adapted Bernhard’s Old Masters and The World-Fixer, takes readers on a wickedly funny tour...

Dublin, June 16, 1904: a day in the life of the advertising agent Leopold Bloom and the sensations of the ordinary – James Joyce has created a maximal book from a minimum of matter:...

»Esteemed listeners, do not try to lift the secret of this text«, orders Friederike Mayröcker in her new work of prose – but even its title leaves an infallible...

»Jimi the Polar Bear was lying in the arms of the sleeping child, his paws crossed. It was 1 very young polar pear the size of a puppy and he hardly dared to breathe so as not to wake the child. The child was dreaming that Jimi was lying in its arms and told him 1 story.«

Thus begins the short poetic story of Jimi the Polar Bear and the child Emma, told by the great Austrian poet...

Sometimes, it just hits you and you don’t even know why. That’s when life seems nothing but chaotic, devastating and confusing. Fighting this, however, is profoundly pointless – and anything but funny. If, yet again, you’ve rushed into one of those crises at full throttle and can’t find your way out, you should take a look at The Little ABC of Survival. From »Age« to »Work«, from...

Marcel Proust’s Recherche is one of the most important French novels, if not the most important – reading it can be life changing. Nicolas Mahler’s comic is not a retelling, not a...

fleurs – the flowers, the flower petals, they give this book its title, make us think of spring, of mild air and gently flowing ribbons. But if you let yourself be lured onto that...

Friederike Mayröcker doesn’t have time. Neither for résumé and memory, nor for extensive observations and reasoning and certainly not for storytelling. She doesn’t even have time for life itself...

In his brilliant new graphic novel Nicolas Mahler purges Frank Wedekind’s tragedies Earth Spirit und Pandora’s Box and creates a black comedy about the corporeality of women, the possessive mentality of men, and Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square.

Frank Wedekind’s man-eating Lulu once again finds herself in a Suprematist’s atelier. Struggling back and...

Études is what Friederike Mayröcker calls her prose poetry and lyrical prose pieces, studies then, or »shreddings«, as she says, splintering, brittle and highly concentrated; the language...

»brütt«. To Friederike Mayröcker a symbol of pain and hardship, of the cold and of grief, were it not for the »sighing gardens« that lend a soft counterbalance to the stirrings of love...