Worte und Töne I

Women at Night by Maja Haderlap tells the life story of three generations of Slovenian minority women in Carinthia. Mira, who lives in Vienna, returns to her small hometown to explain to her mother that she must move into a home for the elderly. Gradually, the familiar memories of traumas resurface that Mira begins to process. Yet the silence and the guilt are countered by tolerance, mutual respect and love.

In his novel A Slight Loss of Solitude, Eli Beneš also relates traumas from the Nazi period and nonetheless celebrates life. At the end of the Second World War Prague is buoyed by the joy of victory and hope for a new start, but there is no place for the fate of Jewish people.  Petr, a seven-year-old Auschwitz survivor, encounters rejection and resistance. He falls in love with Ilse, a young Jewish woman from Prague, who is classified as German and expelled by the Czech authorities. For Petr, an odyssey begins across post-war Europe to Palestine where Ilse is waiting for him.

***BIOGRAPHIES***

Maja Haderlap
b. 1961. Writer. She has won numerous prizes, including the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize and the Austrian State Prize. Recently published: Women at Night, 2023.

“Maja Haderlap’s work stands for literature that refuses to accept any boundaries. Her poetry discovers otherness behind every word, reveals a lament behind every silence and finds a deed behind every secret.”
Jury, Max Frisch Prize 2018

Eli Beneš
b. 1976. Writer. He was a presenter with Radio 1 in Prague for fourteen years; he founded a label for electronic music and composed music for Czech television. Recently published in German: Unmerklicher Verlust der Einsamkeit, 2025.

“One of the best Czech books of the year. Overwhelming and impressive.”
Deník N

Stefko Hanushevsky is an Austrian actor. He worked at theatres in Germany and at the Salzburg Festival and is a member of the Burgtheater Ensemble.

Wolfgang Puschnig is one of the most influential Austrian jazz musicians (alto saxophone, flutes, bass clarinet, composition). He was co-founder of the Vienna Art Orchestra and a leading influence on the interpretation of poetry by Ernst Jandl. For this evening, he plays with his son Samo Weidinger, a young pianist, who performs with various groups.