The Morning Before the Journey By Julian Schutting Translation and Afterword by Barbara Z. Schoenberg

Julian Schutting's The Morning before the Journey sketches everyday Austrian life seen through the protective, rose-lensed glasses of imaginary childhood siblings. Judith and Stephan's musings encompass a variety of subjects ranging from humorous, critical, and at times melancholy experiences, to word-games and playfulness with language, to critical appraisals of art and unavoidably, as the sordid adult world seems to invade the pair's private, imaginary world, to gruesome scenes suggesting brutality, violence and youthful intimations of death.