Austria Reads 2024 – Valerie Fritsch

Valerie Fritsch presents her novel ZITRONEN, Suhrkamp 12.02.2024.

Valerie Fritsch VL Suhrkamp

August Drach grows up in a house on the edge of a village that is both hell and paradise. His father, disappointed in himself and in life, mistreats his son and only has tenderness for the dogs. August finds solace with his mother, who lovingly cares for him. But when his father leaves the family, his mother’s affection is transformed: she secretly mixes medication into August’s food, weakens the child and makes him ill; she promises herself attention and admiration from his care. Only years later does August succeed in freeing himself from his mother’s clutches, leading an independent life and experiencing love for the first time. But how does an adult learn to solve the riddle of a childhood in which cruelty and love are inseparable? How does he break the cycle of lies and deceit? And what happens when, years later, this person dares to return to the source of the pain?

With powerful language, gripping images and episodes, Valerie Fritsch’s new novel tells of the monstrosity of a love that makes one helpless and weak, that keeps the other person mentally and physically dependent. There is no escape, except at the price of becoming guilty oneself.

Valerie Fritsch

Valerie Fritsch, born in 1989, works as a freelance author and travels the world. She was awarded the Kelag Prize and the Audience Prize at the 2015 Ingeborg Bachmann Competition. In 2020 she received the Brothers Grimm Prize for Literature. She lives in Graz and Vienna.

Sebastian Weiss- Guitar

Sebastian Weiss is a young, up-and-coming artist on the Austrian music scene.
After completing his bachelor’s degree in jazz guitar at the Gustav Mahler Private University for Music in Klagenfurt, he now lives in Vienna.
There his musical work, influenced by the local independent scene, is leaning more and more towards modern improvised music and avant-garde.
As a member of various projects (Pj and the Cs, SquarEars, Sebastian Weiss and the Noreia Stringquartet) he has travelled all over Austria.
His aim is to create experimental music, but always making sure that it is accessible and touching for the listener.
When he plays alone, he takes the audience with his own compositions and arrangements of his favourite pop songs or jazz standards into spherical worlds of sound and fragile sound constructs that touch and inspire the listener to and inspire the listener to wander away from reality.

Sebastian Weiss