Willi Hengstler, 2026, Von Diderot11 - Eigenes Werk, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=200282931
Wilhelm Hengstler, born in Graz in 1944, earned his doctorate in law in 1969 and is one of the authors associated with the so-called Graz Group. He lives in Judendorf near Graz. After various postgraduate studies, he worked as a cultural journalist, including for Volksstimme and Die Presse. As a director, he made the film adaptation of the Jack Unterweger story, Fegefeuer (1989), Tief oben (1995), and several documentaries. His literary works include Die letzte Premiere (1987), fare (2003), and flussabwärts, flussabwärts (2015).
In 1995, Hengstler received the Viennale Prize, and in 2004 the manuskripte Prize.
Wilhelm Hengstler, Zulm, 2026, Droschl
An opulent novel overflowing with imagination, set in India, which takes its first-person narrator from Vienna on a journey back and forth across the subcontinent. The search for paintings by an Austrian painter—a contemporary of Kokoschka who was forced to flee Vienna for Delhi with his Jewish wife in 1938—turns out to be a dubious assignment: it drives the narrator, shuttling between Europe and India, ever deeper into his own biography and into the history of India.
It is a novel rich in characters, events, and stories, blending fiction with historical events through branching narrative levels and gripping plotlines, while departing from predictable paths with surprising twists.
The fact that Wilhelm Hengstler is also a filmmaker cannot be concealed here. It is powerful imagery and dialogue that propel the plot forward. With virtuosity, he links the travel and adventure novel with a crime story that poses more riddles than it solves, and with adventures of the mind.
Wilhelm Hengstler, who has traveled extensively in India since then, began writing this major India novel twenty years ago: ZULM is his magnum opus, drawing on those experiences and insights.