SHORTLISTED for the Austrian Book Award 2023: Wolf Haas and PROPERTY
Wolf Haas just made the shortlist for the Austrian Book Award 2023 and we are absolutely thrilled! In the words of the jury:
„Wolf Haas has the ability to write about life and death, and he does so in a manner rarely seen in contemporary autofiction literature. Love and anarchy, as always with this author, permeate his new novel, intertwined with the typical swaggering, experimental, and laconic tone. Wolf Haas confidently relies on his narrative skills, creating a current that abates only when absence emerges. Last but not least, this novel is an unprecedented book of mourning, a story on the brink of the moment of utter loneliness.“
- literary highlight this fall
- a bestselling novel
- 1st print run alone: 100.000 copies
- shortlist Austrian Book Award 2023
- selected by New Books in German
- English sample translation available
Haas’s mother, almost ninety-five years old, is dying, but she tells her son that she feels fine. »It annoyed me to no end. My whole life long, Mum had painted a picture of how much she was suffering. Three days before she died, she announced that she was doing fine. There had to be a mistake.« His mother experienced the meaning of property by losing everything. She was born in 1923, but »then inflation came and the money was gone.« As a child, she endured poverty, worked and saved every penny. But it was never even enough for her to buy even a single square metre. Wolf Haas tells his mother’s desperate story with such loving, grim humour that it is simply unforgettable. At last, a new novel by Wolf Haas – containing everything that his readers hoped for. Property is an enjoyable, touching read.
https://oesterreichischer-buchpreis.at/shortlist-2023/
“As his mother lies dying, a son writes her memories from the heart in a race against death: Wolf Haas’s ‚Property,‘ full of ironic, playful language, is a tender declaration of love.“
Stefan Kuzmany, SPIEGEL
„Wolf Haas has written a great little novel: an intimate confession, the critique and praise of a mother, a vehicle of precision and linguistic investigation, the original sound of the life of a parent. This book measures approximately 280 cm² and encompasses an entire life. It is Wolf Haas‘ ‘property.’“
Frank Hertweck, SWR2, Lesenswert
„‚Eigentum‘ is a poetic reading experience in novel form, a story of death and of language, a touching epitaph.“
Richard Kämmerlings, Welt am Sonntag
„The successful author from Maria Saal surprises us with his brilliant stylistic and narrative range, writing for the first time a book that offers deep insights into the private life of his family and his origins. Though he always leaves a back door open in case the truth wants to occasionally take a breather. ‘Property’ is an emotionally-rich, touching, and also conspiratorial journey into the farthest reaches of memory, where the true, wonderful stories are found.“
Werner Krause, Kleine Zeitung (Book of the Week)
„Wolf Haas accompanies his own mother’s death in ‘Property.’ And he realizes that he has quite a bit in common with her.“
Bettina Steiner, Die Presse
„A magnificent lesson in language, education, and everyday life in a village in Austria. In just 160 pages, Wolf Haas tells the story of his mother’s life, with empathy and honesty, anger and mourning, charm and humor, which is quite an achievement when someone has only a few hours left to live.“
Andreas Lesti, FAS
„As in all his books, language plays a special role here. It is oral, musical, but never just dialect. It is always an artistic language that complements the plot or, I’m almost tempted to say: becomes the plot.“
Michael Luisier, SRF2 Kultur
„His books thrive on linguistic wit, humor, and the ease with which Haas seemingly casually packages socially relevant themes into an anarchic text structure and sometimes absurd plots. ‘Property’ is a very personal book, a farewell and a soliloquy of memory.“
Christoph Schröder, Deutschlandfunk