Shooting Rats, Other Plays and Poems By Peter Turrini, Translation and Afterword by Richard Dixon

This volume contains some of the more controversial and personal works produced by Turrini, who has come to be recognized today as one of the leading Austrian dramatists. The plays, Shooting Rats, Infanticide, Death and the Devil, and The Siege of Vienna treat contemporary social conditions and problems in Austria: alienation from the consumer society, the loss of humanity, and the quest for redemption in a morally corrupt world. Turrini's poems, A Few Steps Back, are much more personal than his dramas. They are included here to show the man behind the writer and to reveal the autobiographical element that runs through all of the writings of this socially engaged author.