The Fiction of the I: Contemporary Austrian Writers and Autobiography Edited by Nicholas J. Meyerhofer

The core of any autobiographical writing would seem to be essentially constant, not variable: it is the attempt to reveal the past of one's experience or life, considered from the vantage point of the present. Yet despite this methodological starting point, even a cursory consideration of "autobiographical" texts will quickly reveal their great variety and their idiosyncratic relationship to the question of subjectivity. This volume is an introduction for the English-speaking reader to eight contemporary Austrian writers who have achieved critical acclaim and who, to a great or lesser degree, write autobiographical prose. It is the editor's hope that this thematic introduction to Barbara Frischmuth, Peter Handke, Peter Henisch, Edgar Hilsenrath, Elfriede Jelinek, Peter Rosei, Gerhard Roth, and Fred Wander will make the reader want to discover at first hand the works of these various authors, all of whom either have been or are now being translated into English.