Welcome to the vale of tears. A referee explains his view on the world before going out on the field to blow the whistle in the finals. His finals.

The great satirist Thomas Brussig slips into the role of a referee and reflects on life. How does it feel to get booed by 80,000 people? How does it feel to be surrounded by liars, dodgers and cheaters who look innocent in one second and suffer in the next, just as tactics require it in the 90 minutes of a game? How does it feel to catch attention by making mistakes only (for only wrong decisions spur discussions)? The tragedy of the impartial is that he has to stay neutral in a world where passion is contagious, and remain an amateur among highly paid professionals. And why exactly are referees expected to be just, when nobody believes in justice anyway? This book by Thomas Brussig is the first of a new series by Residenz Verlag: A Litany.

René Templ, a young man and writer, finds a mentor, his intellectual paternity, in Karl Senegger. At the same time, however, he shirks his duties towards his wife and his child - as soon as he feels needed as a father, he shrinks to the size of his son. Karl Senegger, on his part, failed as a father; his son Viktor jumps to death. Was it an irrational act, the final drop of attraction between opposite poles? Or a desperate attempt to stand up against the one you owe your life? Karl Senegger shirks his responsibilities. The father who lost his son finally publishes his child’s literary legacy. Four interwoven stories form this novel, all connected through their subjects, characters and motives. Clemens J. Setz illustrates how sons make their fathers grow, and fathers their sons – and how they break in the presence of each other. Sensitive and tender, joyously playful, but also with confidence and ease – this is a new voice, young and so diversified, a fascinating find. Rewarded with the Ernst-Willner-Preis 2008 at the Bachmann-Wettbewerb and nominated for the aspekte literature award 2007. A haunting novel on fathers who remain sons, and sons who become fathers. An impressive literary debut.

Fatal happiness. The story of two women who are driven into a desperate and fatally suffocating embrace by society.

For the people of a remote village in the foothills of the Austrian Alps, Wilma is a spawn of hell, a monster, and surely not one of them: she is a retarded, corpulent and close-lipped child - and a child without parents. Her helplessness, however, engages the love and sympathy of Agnes, a widowed and childless woman, who both embraces and clings to her fosterling. In constant anxiety for Wilma, she tries to protect their little happiness against the locals, youth welfare officials and all external threats. But their happiness is based on dependence, and in a narrow, secluded world, this can prove lethal... In this book, Evelyn Grill demonstrates once more why her recent novels "Vanitas" and "Der Sammler" [The Collector] made her one of the most provocative voices of contemporary German-speaking literature. She writes uncompromisingly succinct, without sentimentality or shallow morality, and she is never afraid to explore the abysmal depths of the human soul. Let’s worship this author! ANTON THUSWALDNER, SALZBURGER NACHRICHTEN Grill loves to search for strange hobbies and weird passions. Great! DER SPIEGEL

Lois is a nurse, undoubtedly a profession with a reasonable amount of decency. He truly knows how it feels to be entrusted to people who only want the best for you: a childhood in an orphanage, over the hills and far away, is also far away from a fairy tale. As an adult, the world still does not feel like home to him, and neither does Vienna: hairy monsters stroll along Mariahilferstraße, ants are building a mega city under ground, and the city is sitting above it like a sleeping giant. His neighbour Kristina, on her part, has ambitions: private ones that include Lois, professional ones that include pathology. One day, Lois discovers migratory locusts on his windowsill, tiny and fragile monsters that the wind had taken far, far away. Just like Lois himself. Yet flying does not make you an angel, let alone Superman… In his second novel, Michael Stavaric portraits another peculiar character facing an eerie world, and, to quote critics of his debut novel stillborn, he does it “brilliantly”, “masterly”, “linguistically overwhelming”.

Two people make a pair, or a couple, and their relationships can be ruins, arenas, traps, abysses, fulfilment. Coincidence, desire, and life itself create amazing couples: A little girl and her imaginary father make a fantastic pair of liars; a young woman teams up with her unborn child against its father who is interested in his art only; a prisoner and his visitor share intense memories through the glass that separates them. These are some of the encounters Erika Pluhar describes in this book. All of them reveal the magic that arises in any relationship between two people, be they just acquaintances or lovers, a powerful and fascinating energy that inevitably shows its effect on everyone involved. The stories tell how people change whenever they cling to each other, find each other, lose themselves in each other – whenever they meet, touch or find the magic of being twosome.

It must have been an irresistible joy for Günter Brus to invent these “stories”, and they definitely make an irresistible read. The book contains a collection of legends, anecdotes, fables, parables, or “bonsai novelettes”, as Brus himself called them with a twinkle in his eye. Whatever you call them, they burst with inventiveness and ignite the firework of a literary pyromaniac.

press commentary Günter Brus writing goes beyond genre borders (…) protocol, drama, vision and travelogue overlap and alternate in a playful way. With „Sharing the Secret“, artistic energy is turned into fantastic weightlessness. – Salzburger Nachrichten ...a novel of a rare kind. Strangely archaic, it yet bursts all contemporary borders of preconceived opinion. The caleidoscope starts turning after the first few pages, and in its whirling multitude, the reader is hit by cascades of imagery and ideas.– Die Presse Like an automatic writing, bizarre neologisms and somersaulting thoughts lead into a more and more meaningless nowhere (…) Games of any kind find their meaning in themselves. The authors jests are an explosion of dream vision and colour. – Neue Zürcher Zeitung

A group of men and women sets off to a country without name, and their adventures are recounted, told, or, in other words, dreamed up in this book.

„Weil du, mein Um und Auf, für mich, deinem Ab und Zu, unsterblich bist.“

Vieles, an dem der Dichter als Einzelgänger achtlos vorüberginge, rührt ihn ans Herz, wenn er denkt: Schade, dass ich zu ihr, der ja jetzt nur in meinen Gedanken Anwesenden, nicht „Schau!“ sagen kann. So trägt er das Gesehene und Erlebte im Kopf nach Hause, denn es wird ihr auch als ein von ihm Beschriebenes gefallen. Julian Schutting führt Spielarten einer Seelenliebschaft vor, eines luftigen, aber mit starken Fäden ausgestatteten Gespinsts, belebt von einem Hauch von Sinnlichkeit, der die gemeinsam betrachteten Dinge in ein neues Licht taucht; einer frei schwebenden Zusammengehörigkeit, die sich auch in Unterhaltungen über Dinge des Alltags ausdrückt, in heiteren Wechselreden, einem scherzhaft-fiktiven Frage-und-Antwort-Spiel. Ein halb vollkommenes Glück, das aber vielleicht nur ein geborgtes ist: „bis zu unserem ersten Tag hab ich an ein leichtes Dahingehen geglaubt. aber von dem an weiß ich, du wirst mir eine Abschiedserschwernis sein: mein Ein und Alles in dir zurückzulassen!“

Bulgarien kommt, der ultimative Roman dazu ist schon da. Und: Er ist saukomisch.

Bulgaria? Backward, corrupt and lazy? As the new ambassador in London, Varadin Dimitrov, is designated to enhance the image of Bulgaria in the West. When he rings the bell at the respectable address of the embassy in Kensington one morning, he finds that there is indeed a lot of work ahead of him: a provincial mayor at hangover breakfast, the cook at loggerheads with his wife, the vacuum cleaner – broken. Indeed, the civilized world owes thanks to Bulgaria for the invention of the water closet, but that does not help the new ambassador on his mission, nor does the fact that his predecessor refuses to clear the house as he is desperately fighting his return home. And above all: the freezer in the cellar houses ducks kidnapped by the Russian Mafia. Mission impossible? Varadin Dimitrov seeks assistance with a PR-Agency that promises him access to London's high society – glitter, glamour and dozens of celebrities. One of them is his cleaning lady; she leads a double life and moreover she's been dead for the longest time. There's something terribly wrong here, isn't it …. Alek Popov tells of the East in the West and the West in the East. In this novel full of wonderful characters he tells a story of pure folly, sounding as if all of this were not in the least bit funny. English translation available

Die Geschichte einer slowakischen Familie als Paradigma eines Lebens in der Heimatlosigkeit.

At seventeen, daughters never have an easy time with their mothers: The leech is always too short and in Czechoslovakia it must be still a bit shorter. When people say "a chip off the old block" mothers are usually more pleased than daughters. Jasmine Bukovská does not give her mom any reason for such a pleasure as she resembles her aunt: the woman whom her father loved and still loves. Marriage was thwarted by family reason. Then came Róza, the younger sister, satisfied her curiosity about life with the would-be brother-in-law, got pregnant and could be married. Three daughters sprang from this marriage: Iris, Jasmine and Kamilla. Life gets cramped at home as well as in the entire country. Spring in the year 1968 is the time of the great departure: Iris, the elder sister takes advantage of a gap in the Iron Curtain and emigrates to the United States of America, and also for Jasmine the temptation of leaving home and her home country behind grows …. Zdenka Becker is at home between two countries and in two languages. In a questioning tone, but without vain over-verbalization she tells of the loss of old commitments and the search for a new identity.