Ariadne Press

As luck would have it; my exile in France and Mexico, recollections and stories.

Author Schwebel was ten when his family left Vienna in 1938 to seek refuge in Paris from the Nazis; they later fled to Lisbon, Casablanca, and finally to Mexico City in 1942. In 1976 he began publishing stories taken from his colorful life in both Spanish and German; this title brings together his chronological narrative as well as 10 character portraits. The work is interesting and entertaining, and though a part of a scholarly series (Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture, and Thought: Biography, Autobiography, Memoirs Series) it may be of interest to general readers of memoirs, particularly those interested in a multicultural perspective. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Ashantee.

Fin-de-siécle Viennese poet Altenberg (1859-1919) describes a white man's friendship with a group of Ashanti people from the Gold Coast of Africa, who were put on display as living objects in an exhibit in Vienna in 1896. The 38 impressionist episodes, accompanied by reprints of his original drawing and photographs of the exhibit, illustrate a little known facet of encounters between people of different ethnic and cultural background. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The dark and the bright; memoirs 1911-1989.

Hilde Spiel, the "grande dame of Austrian literature" through the 20th century, completed these memoirs about a year before her death in 1990, yet it took nearly 20 years to complete this English translation by her daughter Christine Shuttleworth. The result is a thorough account of the author's impact upon the literary scene, which detailed her extensive emigration through Europe and her eventual return to her native land. Shuttleworth struggled for years to preserve the warmth and the humor in her mother's writings, and to present these gifts to English-speaking literature enthusiasts. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Tante Jolesch; or, The decline of the West in anecdotes.

Austrian novelist and essayist Torberg (1908-79) recalled the coffeehouse scene in Vienna during his youth in the 1975 Tante Jolesch, and augmented it with a second volume in 1987. The English translation follows the format of the first, adding interesting anecdotes from the second. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)