“I was a master of marvelling and a failure in believing,” Amanshauser once wrote on himself. In this attitude, open-minded and extremely sceptical at the same time, he spent decades in his lookout high up on Salzburg’s Festungsberg hill. Secluded, but not isolated; withdrawn, but not indifferent. With ingenuity and acuity, a playful humour and unapologetic seriousness he defended his convictions - against all forms of dogmatism, banality and megalomania. All his books tell this story; most of all, however, do his diaries - a seleciton of them is now published for the first time. The observations and self-reflections in this book, alert, irritated, brilliant, scornful, dreamy and relentless to the point where Parkinson’s disease began its work of destruction, remind the reader how much Gerhard Amanshauser is missing in our time.

“As regards his will towards monomania, Gerhard Amanshauser cannot compare to his friend Thomas Bernhard. In terms of literary boldness, Thomas Bernhard cannot compare to Gerhard Amanshauser. Of all Austrian writers yet to be discovered, this cosmopolitan from Salzburg is the most important.” FALTER, Daniel Kehlmann “As Barbarian in the Prater” is more than the autobiography of its author born in 1928 in Salzburg. It is also an engaging novel about childhood and youth in Austria (1928-1950).

“I was a master of marvelling and a failure in believing,” Amanshauser once wrote on himself. In this attitude, open-minded and extremely sceptical at the same time, he spent decades in his lookout high up on Salzburg’s Festungsberg hill. Secluded, but not isolated; withdrawn, but not indifferent. With ingenuity and acuity, a playful humour and unapologetic seriousness he defended his convictions - against all forms of dogmatism, banality and megalomania. All his books tell this story; most of all, however, do his diaries - a seleciton of them is now published for the first time. The observations and self-reflections in this book, alert, irritated, brilliant, scornful, dreamy and relentless to the point where Parkinson’s disease began its work of destruction, remind the reader how much Gerhard Amanshauser is missing in our time.