Bulgaria (Black Flamingo)
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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
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...
»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...
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...
Spanish world rights (De Conatus), France (Verdier), Czech Republic (Archa), Bulgaria (Black Flamingo)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Der Diwan)
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,...
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Czech Republic (Archa)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Slovenia (LUD Literatura)
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Denmark (Sidste Århundrede), Slovenia (Cankarjeva založba), Turkey (Ketebe)
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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...
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Macedonia (Ars Lamina)
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Czech Republic (Archa)
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Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights (Contra Mundum), Spanish world rights (Galaxia Gutenberg), Russia (AST), France (Verdier)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: USA (Ariadne), France (Verdier)
France (Verdier)
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