MEET THE AUTHOR | READING | MICHAEL STAVARIC IN CONVERSATION WITH FATIMA NAQVI

“Why don’t you just tell a normal story for once?”, the author was asked during an interview, and he answered: “Because enough others do that.”

Michael Stavaric, b. 1972 in Brno, is an Austrian author who lives in Vienna. He is known for his stylistically experimental texts, for which he has found critical acclaim. In his novels he combines rock & pop, myth and narrative in unusual combinations and with a fine sensibility for the deranged cliché, the wayward myth.

In the Austrian Cultural Forum NY the author will present excerpts from his books stillborn, Evil Games and Incendiary Days (forthcoming 2010). He plays with our sense of norms and normality; with his black humor and satiric elements, he seeks to upend the prejudices with which we make sense of the world. The Berliner Zeitung lauded stillborn as a formally audacious work whose dry humor and quirky protagonists transform life in Vienna into a satiric horror show. Tuhe European art channel ARTE characterized Evil Games as a clever, disturbing novel, an artistic montage of timeless episodes that seek to get to the bottom of the war between the sexes. In conversation with Fatima Naqvi (Rutgers University) and with students from the RU Translation Group, who will read translations of his work, he will discuss issues of form, transposition and treason.

“If you imagine, the earth, covered with volcanoes, from here, where I stand, all the way to the horizon, as far as the eye can see, molten rock, erupting from their throats, it cools down only very slowly, that’s very clear. Just like stars, the ones I see at night, far above me, and far, far from me, not registered in any map I could keep in my glove box. Mother was not interested in stars, the earth is flat, isn’t, is, tell me, Mother, tell me now, she only laughed, would not have made a difference where she grew up, in the countryside, where Enlightenment came to, but did not stay, would not have changed a thing, anyway, she says.” (“stillborn”)

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