Hotschnig, Alois 1959-

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HOTSCHNIG, Alois 1959-

PERSONAL: Born October 3, 1959, in Carinthia, Austria.

ADDRESSES: Home—Innsbruck, Austria. Agent—c/o University of Nebraska Press, 312 North 14, P.O. Box 880484, Lincoln, NE 68588-0484.

CAREER: Freelance writer, 1989—.

AWARDS, HONORS: Preis des Landes Kärnten, 1992; Anna Seghers Prize, 1993; Robert Musil scholarship, 1999-2000.

WRITINGS:

Aus: Erzählung (title means "Out"), Luchterhand (Frankfurt, Germany), 1989.

Eine Art Glück (title means "One Kind of Luck"), Luchterhand (Frankfurt, Germany), 1990.

Aus; Eine Art Glück: zwei Erzählungen, Luchterhand (Hamburg, Germany), 1992.

Leonardos Hände, Luchterhand Literaturverlag (Hamburg, Germany), 1992, translation and foreword by Peter Filkins published as Leonardo's Hands, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1999.

Absolution: Ein Stück in drei Akten (play), Kiepenheuer & Witsch (Cologne, Germany), 1994.

Ludwigs Zimmer: Roman, Kiepenheuer & Witsch (Cologne, Germany), 2000.

SIDELIGHTS: Austrian writer Alois Hotschnig has been acclaimed for strong narrative and rhythmic prose in his fiction, as well as his ability to conjure up complex reality unblinkingly, and without flinching from the harshest truths. One of his first novellas, Eine Art Glück, tells the story of a boy born without legs who grows up full of self-loathing, keenly aware of his parents' and indeed the world's disappointment in him. "A plot of this kind is sufficiently horrible, painful, and hopeless by itself, but Hotschnig's writing makes it all the more inescapable. . . [the reader becomes] a victim of the author's magnetism. It is indeed a proof of highest craft and enormous talent," wrote Erich Wolfgang Skwara in World Literature Today.

Hotschnig's first full-length novel, Leonardos Hände (translated as Leonardo's Hands) is considered his most important work to date. In this grim tale, a young man named Karl kills an elderly couple in a car accident that leaves their twenty-four-year-old daughter Anna in a coma. Racked by guilt for fleeing the scene of the accident, Karl visits Anna in the hospital and befriends her when she comes out of the coma a year later, helping her to piece her life back together. Eventually, Karl must face the difference between the Anna he imagined and the real Anna he comes to know. Told through multiple perspectives, journal entries, news articles, and other devices, the novel often leaves the characters without much in the way of real information.

Through these methods, "Hotschnig . . . gives us a literary signal of the postmodern century to come. Perception and existentialism are thrown into question in a manner similar to the way surface 'reality' was attacked at the start of our century," wrote Robert Dassanowsky in the American Book Review. "Hotschnig's. . . . novel is a compelling depiction of the struggle to span the unbridgeable linguistic gap between perception and expression," wrote Tess Lewis in World Literature Today. According to a Publishers Weekly reviewer, "Hotschnig's true subject ultimately reveals itself to be consciousness—or, at least, the process of finding and losing one's identity."

Hotschnig followed up Leonardo's Hands with a play that once again explored the nature of reality and the limits of perception. In Absolution: Ein Stück in drei Akten, an estranged couple, Ernst and Ria, reunites for the funeral of their son, Ludwig, an apparent suicide who had been estranged from both his parents. His brother George and an elderly relative named Berta complete the cast. Questions soon arise as to whether this is really a suicide, an accident, a drug overdose, or even a complex hoax since only a closed coffin is seen throughout most of the play. Reviewing the play in World Literature Today, Reinhold Grimm wrote that Hotschnig "is definitely quite capable of composing deft and subtle if subdued dialogue." According to Peter Filkins, in his forward to Leonardo's Hands, "Reading Hotschnig . . . one cannot help but feel that Austrian literature continues to hold genuine promise. For here is a writer at last able to meld the difficult with the pleasurable, as well as the philosophical with the immediacy of pure intrigue."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

American Book Review, January-February, 2000, Robert Dassanowsky, "Austrian PoMo," p. 30.

Publishers Weekly, January 25, 1999, review of Leonardo's Hands, p. 73.

World Literature Today, summer, 1991, Erich Wolfgang Skwara, review of Eine Art Glück, p. 477; winter, 1994, Tess Lewis, review of Leonardos Hände, pp. 113-114; spring, 1995, Reinhold Grimm, review of Absolution, pp. 352-353.