A freethinker’s philosophical and smart manifest.

Buddha went to the woods, Jesus to the desert and Mohammed crouched down in a cave in order to carve a name to themselves. So, what does Adolf Holl do? At the hair dresser’s he links philosophy and literature with spiritual intellectual history only to find his way back to a profane lifestyle. With “How To Found A Religion” the freethinker Adolf Holl drew up a manifesto. An essential, profound and affectionate one. Intending to found a religion, Holl takes a wander through the history of religions, asking “why” – why a profession of faith? The present day has sent the founders of our religions back to the desert and now a solution it is, what we need: a new religion! Adolf Holl asks questions and searches for the answers. Only one thing he is sure of: The suitable religion is still to be found. Ironically, funny as well as rich in content he describes his longing for a denomination that works and thus can be lived.

A slovakian elderly care nurse’s death and a story about the new Europe and its old boarders. \"I think that one can not let this horrifying story rest, and I am sure that others feel the same as I do.\" Elfriede Jelinek

“Everything started when I, an Austrian living in Slovakia, read about a Slovak who had been found dead in on of Austria’s rivers - naked.” The last time Denisa Soltísová was seen alive, she was wandering around in an austrian city; it was January the 19th 2008, at night , only wearing underwear. Days after this incident she was found – dead and naked. The 29-year-old woman was a collegegraduate, Slovak and worked round-the-clock as a elderly care nurse. The police closed the case: “Suicide”. Yet the autopsy, performed in Slovakia, showed traces of violence. It is 700 kilometres from Ratkovská Lehota, where Desisa lived, to the place she died. Two different worlds that are parted by 700 kilometres, linked only by commuting busses, full of nurses. Two different worlds in which Martin Leidenfrost tracked the traces of one of them who will never return to the other side of the borders.

She’s forever searching, lands everywhere but never really gets anywhere. She lives in Boboville.

She is one of those people her parents always warned her about. One of those first-person narrators who suffer from a crave for stories, a crave for thingy-stories, idea-stories. Completely bonkers. She hangs around bars, flows through lounges, shakes on dance floors. And, like everybody else in Boboville, she’s always searching – for the Explorer guitar, for the pasty-faced guy with love handles, for the story of Hiram Abiff, that special Zappa bootleg. She is searching for Anouk Aimée in 8 ½, the Freitag bag with the B in chartreuse, Coop’s devil’s face, the four daiquiris at Floridita’s, burning Elmar. Like all the others, she lives in the town of towns. She lives in Boboville. In this postmodern city novel, we accompany the protagonist on her daily odyssey. The author recounts the ludicrous episodes in the lives of the bobo (bourgeouis bohemian) people. Meet the hippie baker with LSD-coloured hair, the poet with the sharp knife, the chancelor, and the climber. They all land everywhere, but never get anywhere. They are already there. In Boboville.

Motherhood’s hell, love’s death: a requiem for those who have grazed their knees due to euphoria.

She came because of Ivan, it is him she is here for. Ivan is her home, the place of her wishes and all her longings, the place where true love is to be found.However, when she gets pregnant, one baby, then the third one, it is Ivan who traits their idea. Love turns into obsession, drowning in excesses of violence. This betrayal breathes vengeance, as passionate as love, as brutal as desire. “I am their mother. I gave birth to them. I can do whatever I like to do with them.” Michaela Falkner tells the story about a love dying, dramatic like a Greek Tragedy. At the same time she reveals the horror and cruelty of a daily life ruled by domestic violence. The author bears a lot of courage in order to write with the icy pathos of fragility and cruelty.

Being on the way – the ultimate litany

"I am an explorer without mission, withous specialty and without destination." Two month, which Blixa Bargeld predominantly spends in a bus - from Lisbon to Moscow, Oslo to Naples, crisscrossing Europe. Free day on a tour means a day for travelling. And what does Blixa Bargeld do? He visits a museum, buys shoes and wines and dines alone (mostly), but not only this ... A tournee, a litany and a declaration of love to Europe.

Thomas Bernhard's memoirs of his youth - consisting of five volumes "Die Ursache" (1975), "Der Keller" (1976)," Der Atem" (1978), "Die Kälte" (1981), "Ein Kind" (1982) - contain central motifs of his novels, as well as the origins of the hurts he endured. His childhood, his schooldays as a boarder in Salzburg, his apprenticeship and student days, and his isolation at the age of eighteen in a sanatorium. Anyone wishing to understand Bernhard's world will find the key here. The sister comes in, grabs the washing, and throws it onto a chair beside the bath. Then she lifts my hand. All night she calls at various rooms, lifting people’s hands and feeling their pulses. She starts stripping the bed, the bed in which someone has just died. She throws the covers on the floor and then lifts my hand again, as though waiting for me to die. Then she bends down, gathers up other covers, and goes out with them. Now I want to live. (From: In the Cold) The autobiography is Thomas Bernhard's richest and most mature work. It is one of the great literary documents of our '70s. (Marcel Reich-Ranicki, FAZ)

Walter Kappacher received the Georg Büchner Prize 2009! 10 days in the life of Hugo von Hofmannsthal: an ageing author returns to the place of his childhood.

August 1924: It is rather embarrassment why the elderly writer H. returns to a place from his childhood – Fusch, a spa in the midst of Salzburg’s mountains where he had spent summer after summer with his parents when he was growing up. A lot has changed in the meanwhile: friendships have grown apart, his fame dates back several years and his work is endangered by his impaired health and the slightest disturbances. The change of time after the war has found its way even into the life in remote Fusch and H., who became a stranger to himself, participates only in observing. During a walk H. becomes unconscious. Awaking, he gets to know young Doctor Krakauer, a duchess’ physician in private practice. He too is a repatriate in a foreign world. H. seeks to gain his friendship, but still there is the duchess and still there is a loneliness he cannot escape from. Walter Kappacher tells from a life, which has been overtaken by the time. He tells with captivating intensity and with lucid empathy, as competent as virtuosic. He confirms his special position in the german-speaking literature: “a rare one” (Peter Handke).

Erika Pluhar describes a man’s journey into finding himself.

Emil Windhacker is a man in the prime of life. Career oriented, sporty, always in good company, he enjoys his life to the full. But a medical test result and a feeling of weakness and failure that is new to him get him thinking. Is this diagnosis his death sentence? When Emil meets actress Marie Liebner, events follow in rapid succession … Erika Pluhar describes three days in the life of a man. From Emil's subjective perspective, Pluhar draws an accurate picture of the male view on Life’s major themes of love, illness and death. Pluhar’s tale of eventual self-discovery is poetic, humorous, tightly narrated and deeply moving.

Die Neuauflage der beliebten Winter- und Weihnachtsgeschichten. Das Kultbuch für alle Brandstetter-Fans.

»Alle Jahre wieder …«, so beginnt eines unserer geläufigsten Weihnachtslieder, und es liegt gewiß etwas Beruhigendes in dieser gleichbleibenden Wiederkehr. Und doch ist kein Jahr wie das andere, und wenn die Adventszeit naht, wenn es draußen kalt und in der Stube geheizt ist, dann rückt man wohl so manches Mal mit der Familie und guten Freunden zusammen und erinnert sich gegenseitig an Geschichten und Begebenheiten. Sie liegen vielleicht schon lang zurück, aber sind im Gedächtnis geblieben, weil sie für die Erwachsenen etwas Besonderes oder für die Kinder etwas Neues waren. Da mischt sich dann oft Behagliches mit Bewahrtem. Solcherart sind auch die Geschichten, die Alois Brandstetter in diesem Buch erzählt. Es sind Erinnerungen an die Winter und Weihnachtsfeste seiner Jugend, die er in dem kleinen Ort Pichl in Oberösterreich verbracht hat in den Jahren nach dem großen Krieg und der bösen Herrschaft. Aber ob Brandstetter vom Eisstockschießen, vom Sternsingen oder von frühen Skiversuchen berichtet, vom ersten Radioapparat oder von einer großen Überschwemmung, er tut es erfrischend unsentimental und immer detailfreudig und genau. Wenn volkstümliche Erzählliteratur über Weihnachten heute noch möglich ist, dann so.

Warum gehen alle Schiffe irgendwann unter? Warum geht immer alles schief? Und warum hat einer, den kein Schwein kennt, überall seine Finger im Spiel?

Why do all boats founder at a certain point? Why does everything go wrong? And why does somebody whom not a soul knows have everywhere a finger in the pie? This pet shop keeper, the guy from next door: He is everywhere and nowhere at home, lives with a golden hamster (thus almost alone), is inconspicuous like a turtle and keeps aloof from people. He only gets in touch with water on and off, then there is a lot of action: assassinations, natural disasters, und permanently there are boats foundering somewhere. Small ones, big ones, the Titanic, with all hands. And always there is our pet shop keeper involved, has above all always already been there and knows too much. A person who doesn’t think of anything evil (of course!), but is he therefore one of us? Or maybe rather God and the devil and everybody’s fate? Michael Stavaric is surfing through the centuries, back and forth, is landing in other eras and is in one phrase back in the present. He brings us news, comfort and warning: universal flux, even the stones, but also the devil never sleeps. History for Michael Stavaric consists of stories, but thousands of them – ones that you haven’t yet heard that way. This is about everything, from the very beginning... until the end, that won’t be a happy one, but neither a bitter one.