Ilse Aichinger Boeken

A moving work of fiction from one of the most important writers of postwar Austrian and German literature. Born in 1921 to a Jewish mother, Ilse Aichinger (1921-2016) survived World War II in Vienna, while her twin sister Helga escaped with one of the last Kindertransporte to England in 1938. Many of their relatives were deported and murdered. Those losses make themselves felt throughout Aichinger's writing, which since her first and only novel, The Greater Hope, in 1948, has highlighted displacement, estrangement, and a sharp skepticism toward language. By 1976, when she published Bad Words in German, her writing had become powerfully poetic, dense, and experimental. This volume presents the whole of the original Bad Words in English for the first time, along with a selection of Aichinger's other short stories of the period; together, they demonstrate her courageous effort to create and deploy a language unmarred by misleading certainties, preconceived rules, or implicit ideologies.

“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 escaped with one of the last Kindertransporte to England in 1938. Many of their relatives were deported and murdered. Those losses make themselves felt throughout Aichinger’s writing, which since her first and only novel, The Greater Hope, in 1948, has highlighted displacement, estrangement, and a sharp skepticism toward language. By 1976, when she published Bad Words in German, her writing had become powerfully poetic, dense, and experimental. This volume presents the whole of the original Bad Words in English for the first time, along with a selection of Aichinger’s other short stories of the period; together, they demonstrate her courageous effort to create and deploy a language unmarred by misleading certainties, preconceived rules, or implicit ideologies.

The Bound Man is storytelling for our times. Here we find works of fiction where a present darkness and obscurity usher extraordinary performances into the light of day: a man bound hand and foot; a death told in reverse; a speech under the gallows. Written with disarming simplicity, this collection of stories puts language to the test.

The first English translation of a major work of postwar German poetry. Austrian writer Ilse Aichinger (1921-2016) was a member of the Gruppe 47 writers' group, which sought to renew German-language literature after World War II. From a wide-ranging literary career that encompassed all genres, Squandered Advice was Aichinger's sole poetry collection. The book gathers poems written over several decades, yet Aichinger's poetic voice remains remarkably consistent, frequently addressing us or a third party, often in the imperative, with many poems written in the form of a question. Even though they use free verse throughout, the poems are still tightly structured, often around sounds or repetition, using spare language. Phrases are often fragmentary, torn off and juxtaposed as if in a collage. Isolated and haunting, the images are at times everyday, at other times surreal, suggesting dreams or memories. The tone ranges from reassuring and gentle to disjointed and disturbing, but the volume was carefully composed by the author into an integral whole, not chronological but following its own poetic logic. This new translation makes Aichinger's critically acclaimed book, which has inspired poets the German-speaking world for decades, available to English-language readers for the first time.

"First published in 1987, and encompassing texts from almost four decades, Kleist, moss, pheasants brings together autobiographical pieces, diary entries and reflections on fellow authors by Ilse Aichinger. As Richard Reichensperger remarks, the volume demonstrates the complex interconnections between historical events and Aichinger's life, thought and writing. The style, tone, and force of Kleist, moss, pheasants foreshadow the major achievements of Aichinger's late productive period around the turn of the millennium, which are evidenced in Film and fate and Improbable journeys."--Back cover

Ilse Aichinger was born to a Jewish mother in Vienna in 1921. Prior to 1938 her Aunt Klara waited for the family in London, but only Ilse’s twin sister, Helga, escaped on the last Kindertransport. Ilse remained. She survived, and published The Greater Hope in 1948. The novel reflects Ilse Aichinger’s experience of anti-Semitism as young woman in Nazi Austria, and through her extraordinary use of language the author not only captures the horror and the humanity of that experience, but transcends it to offer a profound meditation on a greater hope, the metaphysical perspectives of which surpass the physical trajectories of devastation, deportation and death. Many authors have endeavoured to determine the sense and meaning of Aichinger’s works, which are often considered complex and multi-layered. This may explain why one of Austria’s most gifted authors has not yet received the international recognition she deserves. The Nachwort to this new translation casts fresh light on The Greater Hope through an original and in-depth analysis of interviews given by Aichinger throughout her life.

1939 blieb Ilse Aichinger in Wien, als ihre Zwillingsschwester Helga mit einem Kindertransport nach London gebracht wurde. Einige ihrer Familienmitglieder haben die Shoah nicht überlebt. In ihrem von Abschied und Ankunft, von Leiden und Kreativität gezeichneten Leben haben die Zwillinge bedeutende literarische und künstlerische Werke geschaffen, die 100 Jahre nach der Geburt der Schwestern in diesem zweisprachigen Band untersucht und gewürdigt werden.

Dramatic sketches full of surprising, unpredictable twists and turns from a major twentieth-century German-language author. A member of the Gruppe 47 writers’ group which sought to renew German-language literature after World War II, Ilse Aichinger (1921–2016) achieved great acclaim as a writer of fiction, poetry, prose, and radio drama. The vignettes in At No Time each begin in recognizable situations, often set in Vienna or other Austrian cities, but immediately swerve into bizarre encounters, supernatural or fantastical situations. Precisely drawn yet disturbingly skewed, they are both naturalistic and disjointed, like the finest surrealist paintings. Created to be experienced on the page or on the radio rather than the stage, they echo the magic realism of her short stories. Even though they frequently take a dark turn, they remain full of humor, agility, and poetic freedom. 

The essays in this volume record journeys which are improbable in every sense. Writing in Viennese cafés on whatever paper is to hand, Ilse Aichinger travels into history, into memory, into the present and into her imagination. She traces the life story of her great grandfather „Dziadzio“, recalls the cramped apartment in post-war Vienna where she sat at a „little whitepainted kitchen table and started writing The Greater Hope,“ ponders „the limits of what could be comprehended“ after the 11th of September 2001, and Pictures Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking riding on Vienna’s No. 71 tram, „although she’s anarchic enough to be barely imaginable ‘where we live.’“ As Rüdiger Görner comments in his introduction to this first English translation of Unglaubwürdige Reisen, Aichinger’s remarkable journeys „pulsate with life and wisdom, with joy in exploring and in the myriad possibilities of meaning.“

In Film and Fate: Camera Flashes Illuminating a Life, Ilse Aichinger describes her past and her present largely from the viewpoint of her abiding passion for the cinema, and for still photography. She reflects on her life by discussing directors ranging from Luchino Visconti to Leni Riefenstahl, actors ranging from Orson Welles to Stan Laurel, and photographs by Bill Brandt depicting subjects as diverse as the Brontës’ Haworth Parsonage and London’s East End. Though Aichinger’s recollections are detailed, intriguing and vivid, they are pervaded by her sense of the contingency and fragility of existence – of how the presence of pictures and people in her life presages their disappearance, and of how “memory shatters easily when you try to master it.”