Rights sold to:
Bulgaria (Black Flamingo)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: France (Verdier), Czech Republic (Archa), Croatia (Leykam), Slovenia (Hermagoras/Mohorjeva)
Roppongi / Roppongi
Requiem for a Father
Novella
Josef Winkler approaches the life, death and funeral of his father from ever new angles – organizing a »wake« for his father and thus allowing this larger-than-life figure who dominated his childhood and his early works to rise up once again.
»Three years ago, when I and my family were staying in Tokyo, where we took up residence in the Roppongi district«, writes Josef Winkler about his new book, »my father died, aged 99. One year before...
Read more
Josef Winkler approaches the life, death and funeral of his father from ever new angles – organizing a »wake« for his father and thus allowing this larger-than-life figure who dominated his childhood and his early works to rise up once again.
»Three years ago, when I and my family were staying in Tokyo, where we took up residence in the Roppongi district«, writes Josef Winkler about his new book, »my father died, aged 99. One year before his death, after discovering that in my last volume of prose I had scattered neither cornflowers nor peonies for a farmer from my home village, he informed me in a short but dramatic telephone monologue that when the day finally arrived I should not come to his funeral. When we found out about his demise I was standing in the Austrian embassy in Tokyo, in front of a pane of floor-to-ceiling glass. I was staring out at a pool of orange wakin fish when a heron with wide outstretched wings alighted on the edge of the pool. Well then, I thought, in this moment of mourning and happiness, my dead father has reappeared to me in the shape of a white heron before being put underground, with his long, thin red legs and his long pointed beak, now covered in soil, looking for worms for his future grave in Roppongi. His curse had been fulfilled, we did not travel back but stayed in Roppongi.«»Everything one appreciated in earlier works by Winkler has come to maturity here: the plight of describing, the self-irony, the unique, radical precision in arranging and formulating the motifs.« Frankfurter Rundschau
»Roppongi will decisively advance Winkler in his literary career not because he has finally overcome his Carinthian origins, but due to the lightness and awareness with which he brings together then separates the various narrative planes. This technique creates space for irony and wit to join the often ultra-precise (yet often fantastic) descriptions we have long known from this writer.« Der Standard
»Everything one appreciated in earlier works by Winkler has come to maturity here: the plight of describing, the self-irony, the unique, radical precision in arranging and formulating the motifs.« Frankfurter Rundschau
»Roppongi will decisively advance Winkler in his literary career not because he has finally overcome his Carinthian origins, but due to the lightness and awareness with which he brings together then separates the various narrative planes. This...
»Roppongi will decisively advance Winkler in his literary career not because he has finally overcome his Carinthian origins, but due to the lightness and awareness with which he brings together then separates the various narrative planes. This...
Read more
2007, 160 pages
Translation Sample Romanian
DISCOVER
Nachricht
Josef Winkler Receives the Austrian Franz Kafka Prize 2024
The Austrian author has received the Franz Kafka Prize 2024 in recognition of his oeuvre.DISCOVER
Nachricht
Josef Winkler Receives the Austrian Franz Kafka Prize 2024
The Austrian author has received the Franz Kafka Prize 2024 in recognition of his oeuvre.Persons
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Latest first
Year of Publication: 2020
Josef WinklerYear of Publication: 2020
Embark on the Journey or Manipulator of Sunbeams
It is fuelled by life and death in his native Kamering, by the bustle of Italian markets – by the turbulence between the pyres in Varanasi, India. But it can also be fuelled by books, paintings and sculptures, as this collection shows. And sometimes it ignites itself, the zest for language simply starts to burn – when the author sweeps together what needs to be sung of. Then he...
Year of Publication: 2019
Josef WinklerYear of Publication: 2019
The City Chronicler of Kolkata
»On New Market two white roosters with sickle-shaped tails and red, jagged, translucent, upright combs that keep flapping to one side like rubber with every movement are standing in a basket. All around the shining light bulbs are coated in silver foil, so that the light falls focused on the piles of papayas, mangos and the fruits of the pineapples from Kerala.« This is one of the chapter...
Year of Publication: 2018
Josef WinklerYear of Publication: 2018
Take the Blame, Father or Death Be Writ into My Heart
It was only a few years ago that Josef Winkler learned about the fact that his fellow Carinthian Odilo Globocnik, who had headed the »Aktion Reinhardt« and boasted about the mass...
Rights sold to:
Spanish world rights (De Conatus), France (Verdier), Czech Republic (Archa), Bulgaria (Black Flamingo)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Der Diwan)
Year of Publication: 2011
Josef WinklerYear of Publication: 2011
Saying Reality as Though It Wasn't Real Anyway or The Angels' Tantrums
After Josef Winkler received the Georg Büchner Prize in Darmstadt on 1 November 2008, he gave a speech that forms the basis of this book. It answers a few questions: Josef Winkler,...
Rights sold to:
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Czech Republic (Archa)
Year of Publication: 2008
Josef WinklerYear of Publication: 2008
I'm Going to Pluck One of My Eyelashes Out and Stab You to Death With It
»Travelling in order to become homeless«, writes Henri Michaux. When Josef Winkler was writing his novels about his Austrian region of Carinthia, the author repeatedly journeyed to Italy,...
Rights sold to:
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Slovenia (LUD Literatura)
Year of Publication: 2003
Josef WinklerYear of Publication: 2003
Corpse, Stalking Its Family
In his new book, Josef Winkler introduces us to his poetic, stylistic and geographical universe in 80 prose miniatures. 80 short stories about love and death, childhood and youth; about reading and...
Rights sold to:
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Czech Republic (Archa)
Year of Publication: 2001
Josef WinklerYear of Publication: 2001
Natura morta
Crossing the street in the afternoon in a deluge of rain to buy pizza for his colleagues, the fig seller’s beautiful son is hit by a fire engine, and dies instantly. The drama calms in the...
Rights sold to:
Denmark (Sidste Århundrede), Slovenia (Cankarjeva založba), Turkey (Ketebe)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights (Contra Mundum), Spanish world rights (Galaxia Gutenberg), Russia (AST), France (Verdier), Italy (Forum), Norway (Solum), Czech Republic (Archa), Bulgaria (Black Flamingo), Lithuania (Kitos Knygos), Croatia (Leykam), Bosnia (Vrijeme), Ukraine (Knihy XXI)
Year of Publication: 1998
Josef WinklerYear of Publication: 1998
When the Time Comes
In Josef Winkler’s native village there used to be a »bone-cooker«, who would collect the bones of the animals from slaughterhouses, put them in a clay jug and let them simmer on...
Rights sold to:
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights (Contra Mundum), Spanish world rights (Galaxia Gutenberg), France (Verdier), Czech Republic (Archa), Slovenia (Hermagoras)
Year of Publication: 1996
Josef WinklerYear of Publication: 1996
Domra
The Domra, who belong to the untouchable caste in India, are responsible for the cremation sites in Varanasi at Harishchandra Ghat and Manikarnika Ghat. The Domra sell wood, collect a fee for each...
Rights sold to:
Macedonia (Ars Lamina)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: France (Verdier), Czech Republic (Archa)
Year of Publication: 1992
Josef WinklerYear of Publication: 1992
Flowers for Jean Genet
»Josef Winkler (born in Carinthia, Austria in 1953) grew up in unhappy circumstances that included a strained relationship with his father and with the community in which he lived, as well as a...
Rights sold to:
Czech Republic (Archa)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: USA (Ariadne Press), France (Verdier), Serbia (Karpos)
Year of Publication: 1990
Josef WinklerYear of Publication: 1990
Graveyard of Bitter Oranges
This novel makes evident that Winkler hopes to never stop chasing the fear that keeps him alive. In southern Italy, where Catholic roots run deep, a deceased Carinthian altar boy collects...
Rights sold to:
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights (Contra Mundum), Spanish world rights (Galaxia Gutenberg), Russia (AST), France (Verdier)
Year of Publication: 1987
Josef WinklerYear of Publication: 1987
The Serf
The Serf begins with Winkler’s vision of a Carinthian village in the Drau Valley. Children of peasants, who had watched the adults burn the dry haulm on the fields, pulled a bushel of...
Rights sold to:
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: USA (Ariadne), France (Verdier)
Year of Publication: 1983
Josef WinklerYear of Publication: 1983
The Abduction
After a lengthy stay in Vienna, Josef Winkler retired to a farm in Carinthia to finish his novel Muttersprache in 1981. He was accommodated by the family of mountain farmer Nyotchka Vasilyevna...
Rights sold to:
France (Verdier)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Japan (Dogakusha), Ukraine (Krytyka)
DISCOVER
News
Josef Winkler: 70th Birthday on March 3, 2023
»Josef Winkler is somebody who negotiates the frontiers and transforms his anxiety into desire by the act of writing, and with the risky balancing act on the brink of the abyss finds a firm...News
Josef Winkler awarded Vilenica Prize 2021
We are delighted to announce that Josef Winkler has been awarded the Vilenica Prize 2021.News