Heimito von Doderer

The first English translation of an essential Austrian novel about life in postwar, mid-century Vienna, as seen through a wide and varied cast of characters. The Strudlhof Steps is an unsurpassed portrait of Vienna in the twentieth century, a novel crowded with characters who range from an elegant, alcoholic Prussian aristocrat, to an innocent ingénue, to "respectable" shopkeepers and tireless sexual adventurers, bohemians, grifters, and honest working-class folk. The greatest character in the book, however, is the city of Vienna, its streets and surrounding hills and woods depicted by Heimito von Doderer with all the vividness of Joyce's Dublin or Döblin's Berlin. The novel interweaves two time periods, 1908 to 1911 and 1923 to 1925, and finds its central focus and governing metaphor in the monumental outdoor double staircase that gives the book its title. Here people of the city, with their complicated pasts and ever-changing present concerns, continually intersect and then proceed on their separate ways. The Strudlhof Steps is a masterpiece of modern Austrian literature that is at once an absorbing (and highly popular) soap opera, full of suspense and surprise, and an experimental tour de force. Vincent Kling's translation is the first into English.

The Depth of the Years

The Strudlhof Steps

English industrialist Robert Clayton and his son, Donald, open a branch office of their business in Vienna and pursue their lives and fortunes in the years before World War I

The Waterfalls of Slunj

Clara Winston

Richard Winston

The Demons (Sun and Moon Classics)

Roman

Die Wasserfälle von Slunj

Tagebuch eines Schriftstellers 1940-1950

Tangenten

nach der Chronik des Sektionsrates Geyrenhoff : Roman

Die Dämonen

Ein Mord den jeder begeht

Heimito von Doderer liebte Drachen und prophezeite mit hintersinnigem Charme ihre Wiederkehr. In seinem Ritterroman «Das letzte Abenteuer» erzählt er aufs neue die alte Geschichte vom edlen Helden, der den Drachen tötet und die Königstochter heiratet, doch die Handlung steht völlig auf dem Kopf. Der Kampf verläuft anders als erwartet, ein weiterer Ritter erlegt den Lindwurm, doch beide verschmähen die Dame, so dass ein Lückenbüßer für die Hochzeit gesucht werden muss. Der Ritter Ruy de Fanez aber zieht weiter auf der Suche nach «aventiure», und er findet in seinem letzten Abenteuer den eigentlichen Sinn seiner Existenz.

Das letzte Abenteuer

A novel of obsession and self-revelation encased in a murder mystery. A successful business man, Conrad Castiletz, is lead to investigate the death of his wife's sister, Louison, on a train several years before. He discovers, however, that his participation in a childish prank aimed at the young woman had resulted in her death.

Every Man a Murderer

Убийство, което всеки извършва

Translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston

The Demons

Texte aus der Gefangenschaft

Die sibirische Klarheit

Frühe Prosa

Ein Umweg

Grundlagen und Funktion des Romans

A novel based on Doderer's own experience as one of the thousands of Austrian World-War I prisoners-of-war trapped east of the Ural Mountains by the Russian civil War. Pawns of incalculable violence and cruelty -- as well as indulgence -- some will eventually manage to make their way back to Austria.

A Novel of the Russian Civil War

The Secret of the Empire

Heimito von Doderer

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