University of London School of Advanced Study

INSTITUTE OF GERMANIC & ROMANCE STUDIES

INGEBORG BACHMANN CENTRE WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE READING

BETTINA BALÀKA
reads from the novel she is currently writing 'Hinterland'

on Friday, 4 March
5.30 for 6 p.m.   (ALL WELCOME)

at the

 Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies

29 Russell Square, London WC1

Bettina Balàka is currently Writer-in-Residence at the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre for Austrian Literature at the Institute. Born in Salzburg in 1966, Balàka is an important voice in contemporary Austrian poetry and prose. Her work addresses the problems faced by minorities (Der langangehaltene Atem, 2000) as well as the gender issues confronting Austrian society. Her latest collection of short stories (Unter Jägern, 2002) deals with the (im)possibility of individual self-definition in modern society. Among the many prizes that Balàka has been awarded are the Meta-Merz-Preis (1999) and the Theodor Körner-Preis (2004). She is the current holder of the Robert-Musil-Stipendium.

On Friday, 4 March 2005, Bettina Balàka will give a reading entitled 'Hinterland', the novel she is currently writing. It is set in Vienna in 1922, when Lieutenant Balthasar Beck returns to his home town having spent seven years as a prisoner of war in Siberia. He finds the emperor whom he had served no longer exists and the order in which he believed destroyed. He attempts to settle in again with his wife, Marianne, who had been pregnant when he left in 1915, and his daughter Aimée, whom he now meets for the first time, and returns to his old job as a Detective Inspector. A murder soon occurs which affects him personally: the victim has been tortured in a way typical of the prisoner of war camps. Is this unfinished business? Other 'Siberian-style' murders follow and Beck's past returns to haunt him.

INSTITUTE OF GERMANIC & ROMANCE STUDIES

University of London School of Advanced Study

29 Russell Square, WC1B 5DP

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