The award-winning Austrian novelist Arno Geiger will be giving a workshop at SECL, organised by the Centre for Modern European Literature, with support from the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre for Austrian Literature.
Arno Geiger was awarded the 2005 German Book Prize for the novel Es geht uns gut [We’re Doing Fine], which combines the upheavals of twentieth-century Austrian history with an absorbing portrayal of family life over four generations. He has since attracted international acclaim for his poetic and sensitive treatment of relationships on the brink in Alles ueber Sally [All About Sally, 2007] and Anna nicht vergessen [Don’t Forget Anna, 2010]. His most recent work, Der alte Konig in seinem Exil [The Old King in his Exile, 2012] describes his father’s descent into dementia and its effects on the whole family. Despite its intensely personal and disturbing nature, Geiger treats his subject matter with refreshing honesty and lightness of touch, showing himself once again to be a master of the tragicomic. At the workshop we will look at excerpts from Geiger’s latest work Der alte Konig in seinem Exil (2012), which has yet to appear in English. Copies of the passages to be discussed and literal translations are available from the organisers in advance: the workshop is open to anyone interested in literary translation, regardless of their level of German.
The Centre will host a translation workshop at 3pm on 7 June, with a reading at 6pm in SECL staff common room.
For more details, please see www.kent.ac.uk/secl/german/events