Hinterland

A poignant, heartbreaking novel depicting the quiet heroism of ordinary people in the face of suffering, and the struggle to live a normal life as the world falls apart around them.

Autorentext
Arno Geiger grew up in the Austrian Alps, in a village overlooking Lake Constance. His grandparents were farmers, his father was the local government clerk and his mother a primary school teacher. He studied German and comparative literature at university and his debut novel appeared in 1997. In 2005, he was awarded the inaugural German Book Prize, and his writing has won numerous other prizes. His autobiographical novel The Old King in His Exile was translated into twenty-eight languages and won several literary prizes. He is married and lives in Vienna. Jamie Bulloch has translated almost fifty books from German, including works by Timur Vermes, Robert Menasse, Sebastian Fitzek and Daniela Krien. His translation of Birgit Vanderbeke’s The Mussel Feast won the 2014 Schlegel-Tieck Prize, an award for which he has been runner-up on two further occasions. He is also the author of Karl Renner: Austria. Jamie lives in London with his wife and three daughters.

Klappentext
The year is 1944 and Veit Kolbe, a young German soldier, injured fighting in Russia, is recovering at Mondsee, a village and a lake below Drachenwand mountain, close to Salzburg in Austria. Here he meets Margot and Margarete, two young women who share his hope that sometime, sooner or later, life will begin again.

The war is lost but how long will it take before it finally comes to its end? In Beneath the Drachenwand, Arno Geiger tells of Veit's nightmares and the strangely normal life of the small village, of the ?Brazilian' who dreams of returning to Rio de Janeiro, of the landlady and her rallying calls, of Margarete the teacher with whom Veit falls in love, but who doesn't return his affection.

But when Veit's wounds are healed his next call-up orders arrive. The military outlook for Germany and Austria looks increasingly grim and Veit's luck has run out . . .