All Our Games
Columbia House, SC: Camden House, 1988. First edition thus. Hardcover. Firts edition (stated) in English translation from the Austrian. As new, unused review copy with publishre's material laid in. In crisp dust jacket with some sunning to the spine. Hardcover. 205 pp. Translator's preface by Catherine Hutter. Novel by the dean of Austrian poets, Erika Miterer, it is a "terrifying, painfully honest portrayal of the years 1938 to 1945 in Austria, and conveys the atmosphere of Vienna in its darkest year, the Nazi era. " The narrator is a young Austrian girl who at first is a staunch Nazi who sees Hitler as a savior; as her story progresses we see her disallusionment and the fall and ruin of her world. Erika Mitterer (1906-2001) was a native of Vienna who originally worked as a welfare nurse in various regions of Austria beginning in 1926. She had begun a correspondence in poetry with Rainer Maria Rilke a couple of years earlier; her first published work was a book of poetry (1929). In the eraly 1930s she travelled extensively in Switzerland and Italy and in 1934 began work on her novel "Prince of The World" (which was not completed util 1938 and published until 1940). In 1938, she and her husband chose to remain in Vienna rather than flee to Brazil, and her literary work intensified. She became a top writer of the "inner emigration" genre, a concept of German writers who were opposed to Nazism but chose to remain in Germany and Austria; works by these authors criticized Nazism in subtle ways, by allegory or implication. After the war and for the remainder of her life, Mitterer received numerous literary awards. "All Our Games' was completed in 1971 and first published in 1977. As New / fine. Item #E25369
ISBN: 0938100610
Price: $42.50