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FOREIGN RIGHTS AUTUMN 2013 - Hanser Literaturverlage

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M E M O I R<br />

Seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling. Karl-<br />

Markus Gauß describes the earliest sensory<br />

experiences of a small boy in the mid-twentieth<br />

century, and at the same time paints a<br />

portrait of the author as a sheltered child.<br />

© Michael Appelt<br />

Karl-Markus Gauß<br />

Das Erste, was ich sah<br />

The First Thing I Set Eyes on<br />

The attention of the nameless narrator is caught by a voice from the radio: it is reciting<br />

names, a list of missing people and the places they were last seen. The next thing he<br />

hears is the words of his parents and siblings; new words, some of them in foreign languages.<br />

The boy explores the room, the apartment, the house which is inhabited by several<br />

tenants. The more mobile he becomes, the more his horizon expands; he discovers the<br />

playground and the football field. He starts to notice how differently the people around<br />

him behave. There’s often talk of where someone comes from, where they used to be<br />

before. Gradually, the outside world begins to intrude. War remains a constant presence.<br />

The war that has recently ended, with all its casualties, the injured men the boy bumps<br />

into on his daily round, and the new war that’s replaced it, the Cold War that’s beginning<br />

to overshadow the family’s life.<br />

The tone of this memoir is wistful and ironic, celebrating the magic of new beginnings<br />

without concealing the fear they inspire. It revives memories from oblivion, invoking attitudes<br />

long gone as it describes a child who is beginning to get a feel for the power of words<br />

early in life whilst making his own sense of the world from the stories he hears.<br />

»Gauss' imagery is laid out with immaculate narrative economy and linguistic restraint.<br />

As such, this book is reminiscent of Walter Benjamin's Berliner Kindheit um 1900; it may<br />

be lighter in tone, but by no means lightweight.« Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung<br />

Zsolnay Verlag<br />

Memoir. 110 pages.<br />

Hardcover<br />

Publication date: July <strong>2013</strong><br />

Karl-Markus Gauß<br />

born in 1954 in Salzburg,<br />

where he still lives. As well<br />

as being an acclaimed<br />

author, he is a contributor<br />

to and editor of the journal<br />

Literatur und Kritik. His<br />

books have been translated<br />

into many languages and<br />

won him numerous awards,<br />

including the Charles Veillon<br />

European Essay Prize, the<br />

Vilenica Prize for Central<br />

European Literature and<br />

the Georg-Dehio Book<br />

Award. His most recent<br />

publications at Zsolnay are<br />

Im Wald der Metropolen<br />

(2010) and Ruhm am<br />

Nachmittag (2012).<br />

»A Masterpiece« Die Furche<br />

Sales to Foreign Countries<br />

Im Wald der Metropolen: Poland (Czarne), Slovenia (Slovenska Matica)<br />

Die sterbenden Europäer: Catalonia (Simbol), Croatia (Fraktura), Macedonia (Templum), Romania<br />

(Humanitas), Slovenia (Cankarjeva), Sweden (Perenn),<br />

N O N - F I C T I O N 11<br />

F O R E I G N R I G H T S HANSER

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