"I now no longer use the better words" Ilse Aichinger (1921-2016) was one of the most important writers of postwar Austrian and German literature. Born in 1921 to a Jewish mother, she survived World War II in Vienna, while her twin sister Helga esca...

Northern Spain is the only part of Western Europe where anarchism played a significant role in political life of the twentieth century. Enjoying wide-ranging support among both the urban and rural working class, its importance peaked during its "brie...

Thomas Bernhard's "Old Masters" has been called his "most enjoyable novel" by the New York Review of Books. It's a wild satire that takes place almost entirely in front of Tintoretto's "White-Bearded Man", on display in the Kunsthistorisches Museum,...

"'Blue jewellery" is private property. Not to be seen. Not to be talked about. It is worn like a bracelet around the wrists, on ribs, legs, arms. Blue jewellery is another name for the marks left on women's bodies, inflicted by the men around them....

Thousands upon thousands of books have been written about Immanuel Kant since his death. None, let's be clear, have been quite like what we have here. In "Party Fun with Kant", Nicolas Mahler tells the story of Kant – and his fellow serious-minded fi...

Breviaries, books of standard religious readings for particular denominations, are a familiar genre with a long pedigree. But you've definitely never seen a breviary like this one. "The Sex of the Angels" is a playful, often ironic take on the brevia...

Christa Wolf tried for years to find a way to write about her childhood in Nazi Germany. In her 1976 book "Patterns of Childhood", she explained why it was so difficult: "Gradually, over a period of months, the dilemma has emerged: to remain speechle...

After years on the job, police detective Jakob Franck has retired. Finally, the dead – with all their mysteries – will no longer have any claim on him. Or so he thinks. On a cold autumn afternoon, a case he thought he'd long put behind him returns t...

Hans Magnus Enzensberger takes the title for this collection of daring short essays on topical themes – politics, economics, religion, society – not from Jeremy Bentham's famous prison but from a mid-1930s Cabinet of Curiosities opened in Germany by...

Austrian poet and playwright Ernst Jandl died in 2000, leaving behind his partner, poet Friederike Mayrocker – and bringing to an end a half century of shared life, and shared literary work. Mayrocker immediately began attempting to come to terms wit...