Winning Back Lost Terrritory The Writing of Lilian Faschinger, Edited by Vincent Kling and Laura McClary

Lilian Faschinger (born 1950), whose ambivalent relationship to Austria as a woman and as a writer figures prominently in her work, has commented that writing for her is a form of survival. The captivating storytelling prowess of Faschinger’s first full-length novel, Die neue Scheherezade, charts the literal life-saving function of the tale well told. This narrative skill coupled with an often darkly bitter sense of humor in each of her subsequent novels has allowed Faschinger to emerge as one of the most significant narrative voices in Austrian literature of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Faschinger’s work is a constant reworking of actual and emotional places as metaphors for a search for identity. Faschinger navigates the narrows between socio-historical limitations placed on women in traditional Austrian society and the meaningless explosion of identity choices in a post-national world. Faschinger’s subsequent works (Lustspiel, Magdalena Sünderin, Wiener Passion, Paarweise, Stadt der Verlierer) explore thr uncomfortable architecture of spaces, in which each of her protagonists belongs but feels misused and ill at ease. This collection of essays considers aspects of Faschinger’s novels – humor, misogyny, music, globalization – as they relate to the difficulty of forming an (Austrian) identity when the past is unresolved and the present is undefined.