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Distant Transit: Poems
Nobenega kraja ni, ki bi tako zelo klical po zamenjavi besed, po prevodu, kot je jezikovna meja, pravi Maja Haderlap. Prehajanje te meje, vrtanje po plasteh jezika, ki so tudi plasti osebnih, družinskih in kolektivnih zgodovin, dokumentirajo pesmi iz njene najnovejše zbirke. Govorijo o tujstvu in vračanju domov, o daljnih deželah in tesnih prebivališčih, o ljudeh, ki so na poti, iščoč tisto, kar bi lahko osmislilo njihovo življenje. To je lahko drugi, bližnji, skupnoast, lahko je samota ali pesem, za katero je treba najti jezik.
Maja Haderlap (1961) je po pesniških zbirkah Žalik pesmi (1983), Bajalice (1987, nagrada Prešernovega sklada) in Pesmi/Gedichte leta 2011 objavila roman Engel des Vergessens (Angel pozabe), ki ji je prinesel pomembne literarne nagrade in mednarodno bralstvo.
Maja Haderlap (1961) je po pesniških zbirkah Žalik pesmi (1983), Bajalice (1987, nagrada Prešernovega sklada) in Pesmi/Gedichte leta 2011 objavila roman Engel des Vergessens (Angel pozabe), ki ji je prinesel pomembne literarne nagrade in mednarodno bralstvo.
- GenresPoetry
150 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2015
3 people are currently reading
146 people want to read
About the author
Maja Haderlap
12 books32 followersAustrian author of Carinthian Slovenian descent. In 2011 she won the 25,000 Euro prize prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann prize at the 35th Festival of German Literature in Klagenfurt. Her award-winning poetic text is a three-generations family history, and highlights the resistance of the Carinthian Slovenes against the German Nazi Wehrmacht.
She studied German language and literature at the University of Vienna and has a PhD in Theatre Studies. As a writer, she was co-editor of many years of bi-lingual Carinthian-Slovene literary magazine 'Mladje'.
She studied German language and literature at the University of Vienna and has a PhD in Theatre Studies. As a writer, she was co-editor of many years of bi-lingual Carinthian-Slovene literary magazine 'Mladje'.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
December 20, 2021
Keep me safe, language, wall me off against time
Appassionata
when your voice reaches my ear,
my lethargic hearts startles
awake, my ears’limbs pulls you to me,
to catch in the depths of your breath
the familiar tremor that is now fading
and was the beginning of our prelude.
in a flash, my words fly up, swollen into an
orchestra, every sentence a
promise, an appassionata, wanting to be more
than merely said. enter my ear,
here you will be welcomed magna voce,
seen with all senses! even your
farewell is a bright chord, a
tender coda with a ritardando ring.
Translation
is there a zone of darkness between all languages,
a black river, that swallows words
and stories and transforms them?
here sentences must disrobe,
begin to roam, learn to swim,
not lose the memory that nests in
their bodies, a secret nucleus.
will the columbine’s blue be a shade of violet
when it reaches the other side,
and the red bee balm become a pear, cinnamon-
sweet? will my tench be missing a fin
in the light of the new language? will it have to learn
to crawl or to walk upright?
does language know how to draw another language towards it
or only how to turn the other language away? can each word,
then, risk the transit, believe itself
invulnerable, dipped in pitch and hard as steel?
(review in progress)
Appassionata
when your voice reaches my ear,
my lethargic hearts startles
awake, my ears’limbs pulls you to me,
to catch in the depths of your breath
the familiar tremor that is now fading
and was the beginning of our prelude.
in a flash, my words fly up, swollen into an
orchestra, every sentence a
promise, an appassionata, wanting to be more
than merely said. enter my ear,
here you will be welcomed magna voce,
seen with all senses! even your
farewell is a bright chord, a
tender coda with a ritardando ring.
Translation
is there a zone of darkness between all languages,
a black river, that swallows words
and stories and transforms them?
here sentences must disrobe,
begin to roam, learn to swim,
not lose the memory that nests in
their bodies, a secret nucleus.
will the columbine’s blue be a shade of violet
when it reaches the other side,
and the red bee balm become a pear, cinnamon-
sweet? will my tench be missing a fin
in the light of the new language? will it have to learn
to crawl or to walk upright?
does language know how to draw another language towards it
or only how to turn the other language away? can each word,
then, risk the transit, believe itself
invulnerable, dipped in pitch and hard as steel?
(review in progress)
November 24, 2021
Beautiful, seemingly desolate nature returns frequently in the poems. Even Venice seems barren and struggling against the tides without humans.
language opens rotted doors, thrusts the dusty boards from their brackets, reveals the buried stone. it flies at my face like a flock of starled swallows, confronts me as the smell of mold, drops from the jagged armor and hulls of kids’ stuff like silt shed from all that was. - home
Distant Transit is a bundle that made me want to read more poetry at the start of the year, very well done and almost hypnotic in how poet Maja Haderlap paints the landscapes and thinks about language. Nature, in the border region between Austria and Slovenia (Carantania) is often the subject, with sparse if any human population. The atmosphere is filled with melancholy, like for instance in:
the house you once lived in is a roughly timbered frame of smoke, it hovers over you, barely perceptible, imponderable, like you. - transit
House of desires then again is a poem that perfectly captures love.
House of old languages (quote at the top of the review) touches another prominent subject: the decline of language, porous and atrophied as a coral that struggles in globalisation.
In the end I feel the sentiment of the below poem is effortlessly conveyed to the reader and I throughly enjoyed reading about Slovenia for the first time in a poem:
my language wants to be unbridled and large, it wants to leave behind the fears that occupy it, all those stories dark and bright, in which its worth is questioned, only when it dreams does it soar, supple and light, by its very nature nearly song - dreaming language
language opens rotted doors, thrusts the dusty boards from their brackets, reveals the buried stone. it flies at my face like a flock of starled swallows, confronts me as the smell of mold, drops from the jagged armor and hulls of kids’ stuff like silt shed from all that was. - home
Distant Transit is a bundle that made me want to read more poetry at the start of the year, very well done and almost hypnotic in how poet Maja Haderlap paints the landscapes and thinks about language. Nature, in the border region between Austria and Slovenia (Carantania) is often the subject, with sparse if any human population. The atmosphere is filled with melancholy, like for instance in:
the house you once lived in is a roughly timbered frame of smoke, it hovers over you, barely perceptible, imponderable, like you. - transit
House of desires then again is a poem that perfectly captures love.
House of old languages (quote at the top of the review) touches another prominent subject: the decline of language, porous and atrophied as a coral that struggles in globalisation.
In the end I feel the sentiment of the below poem is effortlessly conveyed to the reader and I throughly enjoyed reading about Slovenia for the first time in a poem:
my language wants to be unbridled and large, it wants to leave behind the fears that occupy it, all those stories dark and bright, in which its worth is questioned, only when it dreams does it soar, supple and light, by its very nature nearly song - dreaming language
February 27, 2022
Admirable poems, written with an often cerebral remove - they made for excellent company on a rainy night in Brooklyn
July 14, 2023
from the cliff face silence
breaks off like a boulder and falls on me,
expires. the peak’s cloud sister
sits enthroned above the flank
of košuta mountain, impassive, cold
and white. an imperious pain
gropes for my form, which
trembles from its embrace.
a lover who gets the better of
all the limbs he probes,
seeks out. he knows all about me,
whereas i forget myself.
where else am i, other than in my gaze
at the hairline crack in the stone? in
the feverish head that casts sparks
into the blue of this sky,
which seizes me, just as
the insistent pain has
already enflamed me. I glow here
until the mountain’s shadow fades.
breaks off like a boulder and falls on me,
expires. the peak’s cloud sister
sits enthroned above the flank
of košuta mountain, impassive, cold
and white. an imperious pain
gropes for my form, which
trembles from its embrace.
a lover who gets the better of
all the limbs he probes,
seeks out. he knows all about me,
whereas i forget myself.
where else am i, other than in my gaze
at the hairline crack in the stone? in
the feverish head that casts sparks
into the blue of this sky,
which seizes me, just as
the insistent pain has
already enflamed me. I glow here
until the mountain’s shadow fades.
January 5, 2022
is there a zone of darkness between all languages,
a black river that swallows words
and stories and transforms them?
-- from "translation"
Distant Transit by Maja Haderlap (translated from German by Tess Lewis) is a collection of poems reflecting on memories of her homeland. Haderlap is bilingual Slovenian-German Austrian writer, best known for her multiple-award-winning novel, Angel of Oblivion, about the Slovene ethnic minority's transgenerational trauma of being treated as 'homeland traitors' by the German-speaking Austrian neighbors, because they were the only ever-existing military resistance against National Socialism in Austria.
The first section of the book delivers poetry of memory and youth. Haderlap captures that idealized picture of youth and the surroundings. The region of her youth is a land of great natural beauty, but also a land of 20th Century violence and division. Her voice shifts. Her poetry demonstrates a loss of identity. In explaining borders, we learn that they mean little, just political lines, drawn through the countryside not reflective of the people. Cities and towns stand on their own without mention of nationality. Her language to communicate with the world has also been replaced. Haderlap embodies the desolation of her poetry in her words and in the lower case "i" when referring to herself.
Distraught bees buzz in the corridor
of my abandon language,
birds of passage purge themselves in
rooms assailed and reviled
as if they were finally home -- that is, there where
they once were, language
kept in me thrall to the world but left me
unsatisfied were i to bite through it,
i would taste it desolation. >
This collection, however, does not offer any insight to the poet. An introduction could have helped other readers connect with the poet and her writing. Her grandmother was sent to a concentration camp during the war and her father, as a boy, was tortured by the Nazis. These images still haunt Haderlap in her poetry. A fine collection that shows the loss of cultural identity and being left outside the new order.
a black river that swallows words
and stories and transforms them?
-- from "translation"
Distant Transit by Maja Haderlap (translated from German by Tess Lewis) is a collection of poems reflecting on memories of her homeland. Haderlap is bilingual Slovenian-German Austrian writer, best known for her multiple-award-winning novel, Angel of Oblivion, about the Slovene ethnic minority's transgenerational trauma of being treated as 'homeland traitors' by the German-speaking Austrian neighbors, because they were the only ever-existing military resistance against National Socialism in Austria.
The first section of the book delivers poetry of memory and youth. Haderlap captures that idealized picture of youth and the surroundings. The region of her youth is a land of great natural beauty, but also a land of 20th Century violence and division. Her voice shifts. Her poetry demonstrates a loss of identity. In explaining borders, we learn that they mean little, just political lines, drawn through the countryside not reflective of the people. Cities and towns stand on their own without mention of nationality. Her language to communicate with the world has also been replaced. Haderlap embodies the desolation of her poetry in her words and in the lower case "i" when referring to herself.
Distraught bees buzz in the corridor
of my abandon language,
birds of passage purge themselves in
rooms assailed and reviled
as if they were finally home -- that is, there where
they once were, language
kept in me thrall to the world but left me
unsatisfied were i to bite through it,
i would taste it desolation. >
This collection, however, does not offer any insight to the poet. An introduction could have helped other readers connect with the poet and her writing. Her grandmother was sent to a concentration camp during the war and her father, as a boy, was tortured by the Nazis. These images still haunt Haderlap in her poetry. A fine collection that shows the loss of cultural identity and being left outside the new order.
June 17, 2025
47th book read in 2025
The poems in this collection deal with languages (lost and found), shifting borders due to wars, and the effects of displacement on the author who lived through it. Sometimes you don’t need to move an inch to find yourself in a different country.
The border is between Austria and Slovenia. If you look it up on a map and if you know a little European history, you see that the area is one of those historical “hot spots” where military and economic conflict was nearly continuous for centuries.
I have no credentials for reviewing poetry except that I have been reading it daily for several years now. For me it takes several readings of a poem before I can glean what it might be about. I think it is good for my own writing to be doing this practice.
I was quite impressed by Maja Haderlap’s talent and skill as she brought this very foreign place alive for me while also reminding me how language is a deep and powerful emotional part of any human being’s makeup.
The poems in this collection deal with languages (lost and found), shifting borders due to wars, and the effects of displacement on the author who lived through it. Sometimes you don’t need to move an inch to find yourself in a different country.
The border is between Austria and Slovenia. If you look it up on a map and if you know a little European history, you see that the area is one of those historical “hot spots” where military and economic conflict was nearly continuous for centuries.
I have no credentials for reviewing poetry except that I have been reading it daily for several years now. For me it takes several readings of a poem before I can glean what it might be about. I think it is good for my own writing to be doing this practice.
I was quite impressed by Maja Haderlap’s talent and skill as she brought this very foreign place alive for me while also reminding me how language is a deep and powerful emotional part of any human being’s makeup.
August 14, 2023
Stunning poetry by Slovenian poet Maja Haderlap and beautifully translated from German by Tess Lewis. Here is the beginning of House of Desires
the house we dream of is far away.
it’s small but with an echo chamber
where our voices swing on
musical scales, like forgotten verses
of love songs that have lost their
luster. every false note upsets
our feverish equilibrium. we listen
with vulnerable hearing
to the dust-rustle that washes
over the floor in waves and we hear
the emptiness intone a notturno.
the house we dream of is far away.
it’s small but with an echo chamber
where our voices swing on
musical scales, like forgotten verses
of love songs that have lost their
luster. every false note upsets
our feverish equilibrium. we listen
with vulnerable hearing
to the dust-rustle that washes
over the floor in waves and we hear
the emptiness intone a notturno.
February 20, 2022
A lovely collection of poems from Austrian writer Haderlap. Frequent topics include time and memory, as well as language and translation.
August 21, 2022
"this poem is a life-eater,
it has devoured my years, all of them
vanished without a trace in its boundless
maw, it has sealed up my language,
knows more than i, has
fathomed more than i, has always
absorbed all that ever intruded into
its body—the rooster,
the snake, the egg, the hind,
the peacock, the hare, the dove.
this poem is no noah's ark
that will spit back out all it
holds. it is a hungry whale
that ploughs through languages
hunting for the word-light, the glinting verse."
// life-eater
In "translation", Maja Haderlap writes: "is there a zone of darkness between all languages, / a black River that swallows words / and stories and transforms them?" She deftly explores the constitutive aspect of language and how words make the world. Nature is everpresent but it is defamiliarized through unusual metaphor and errant images, exhibiting a spare beauty amid remote, sublime scenery evoking melancholia. Much of these poems is slippery and elusive.
Haderlap, who writes in German and Slovene, belongs to the Slovenian-minority of Carinthia and her poems uncover the historical tensions between Austria and Slovenia. Language is rescue and a refuge. "my small tongue dreams up / a land where it builds nests of words / to swarm out over the borders that are not its own." It's not neutral of course and it must "risk the transit". Haderlap sees it as an enveloping calm: "i will fall asleep in its arms and / withstand the howling dark."
(I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)
it has devoured my years, all of them
vanished without a trace in its boundless
maw, it has sealed up my language,
knows more than i, has
fathomed more than i, has always
absorbed all that ever intruded into
its body—the rooster,
the snake, the egg, the hind,
the peacock, the hare, the dove.
this poem is no noah's ark
that will spit back out all it
holds. it is a hungry whale
that ploughs through languages
hunting for the word-light, the glinting verse."
// life-eater
In "translation", Maja Haderlap writes: "is there a zone of darkness between all languages, / a black River that swallows words / and stories and transforms them?" She deftly explores the constitutive aspect of language and how words make the world. Nature is everpresent but it is defamiliarized through unusual metaphor and errant images, exhibiting a spare beauty amid remote, sublime scenery evoking melancholia. Much of these poems is slippery and elusive.
Haderlap, who writes in German and Slovene, belongs to the Slovenian-minority of Carinthia and her poems uncover the historical tensions between Austria and Slovenia. Language is rescue and a refuge. "my small tongue dreams up / a land where it builds nests of words / to swarm out over the borders that are not its own." It's not neutral of course and it must "risk the transit". Haderlap sees it as an enveloping calm: "i will fall asleep in its arms and / withstand the howling dark."
(I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)
May 8, 2022
Born into a Slovenian speaking minority of Carinthia, language, translation and identity are the themes driving the most powerful poems in this collection—her first written in German. Her imagery is wonderfully vivid and dense, inviting rereading.
More to come.
More to come.
January 17, 2024
Sublime, still reading
March 9, 2022
i’ve become a measly weed,
base, disgraceful and very common.
that’s what’s ordinary about my nastiness.
(From “rageweed”)
Maja Haderlap imbues her terse lines with concrete images to tell stories of the heights and depths of love (“house of love”), entangled history and language (“almost homeward,” “distant transit”), mother / daughter estrangement (“the invisible girl”), and the everyday.
Reminiscent of the narrator of Beowulf opening his “word-horde” (per Seamus Heaney), for Haderlap (per Tess Lewis) “language opens / rotted doors, thrusts the dusty boards / from their brackets, reveals the buried stone. / it flies at my face like a flock of startled / swallows, confronts me as the smell of mold, / drops from the jagged armor and / hulls of kids’ stuff like silt shed from all that was.” (“home”) (Internal rhymes and alliterations are components of many poems in this collection, nicely captured by Lewis’s translation.)
Coming from a Slovenian-speaking minority living along the border shared by Austria and Slovenia, potential and active conflict (personal and political) perpetually hover over all part of a life. In “summer skirmish,” the erotic is compared to its opposite, which is always intrusively here, unignorable. I could only think of Ukraine today as I read these lines:
i have barely put my arm around you
on this lovely placid morning
when the fleet of bees begins its maneuvers.
behind our backs, a base camp tirelessly
spits out warriors. in the sky
motors howl, in a dog fight,
in a nuptial flight. . .
Then after the historic devastation, the return:
a village searches for the way back from
absence. backs to the wind,
houses cling to each other, the aged
heart of the village drifts
in all directions, walls
spotted as if from fever, as if smeared
with charcoal pencil. . .
. . . here it stood, before it was left behind
in the updraft of progress with the ghosts
that follow it everywhere.
(From “goce return”)
Compelling, beautifully rendered, and of immediate relevance.
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
base, disgraceful and very common.
that’s what’s ordinary about my nastiness.
(From “rageweed”)
Maja Haderlap imbues her terse lines with concrete images to tell stories of the heights and depths of love (“house of love”), entangled history and language (“almost homeward,” “distant transit”), mother / daughter estrangement (“the invisible girl”), and the everyday.
Reminiscent of the narrator of Beowulf opening his “word-horde” (per Seamus Heaney), for Haderlap (per Tess Lewis) “language opens / rotted doors, thrusts the dusty boards / from their brackets, reveals the buried stone. / it flies at my face like a flock of startled / swallows, confronts me as the smell of mold, / drops from the jagged armor and / hulls of kids’ stuff like silt shed from all that was.” (“home”) (Internal rhymes and alliterations are components of many poems in this collection, nicely captured by Lewis’s translation.)
Coming from a Slovenian-speaking minority living along the border shared by Austria and Slovenia, potential and active conflict (personal and political) perpetually hover over all part of a life. In “summer skirmish,” the erotic is compared to its opposite, which is always intrusively here, unignorable. I could only think of Ukraine today as I read these lines:
i have barely put my arm around you
on this lovely placid morning
when the fleet of bees begins its maneuvers.
behind our backs, a base camp tirelessly
spits out warriors. in the sky
motors howl, in a dog fight,
in a nuptial flight. . .
Then after the historic devastation, the return:
a village searches for the way back from
absence. backs to the wind,
houses cling to each other, the aged
heart of the village drifts
in all directions, walls
spotted as if from fever, as if smeared
with charcoal pencil. . .
. . . here it stood, before it was left behind
in the updraft of progress with the ghosts
that follow it everywhere.
(From “goce return”)
Compelling, beautifully rendered, and of immediate relevance.
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
March 15, 2022
3.5 stars
At their best these poems fuse a certain cleverness with the undeniable language of loss during periods or areas of transition.
Haderlap writes in German but she was born into the Slovenian-speaking minority of Carinthia. So clearly the borders of language and identity and violence are where her work comes alive. At least that's how I felt about these poems.
I will say, however, that quite a few of these bounced off of me. They felt overly intellectual, cold, and disconnected. That might be an intended effect or it might be something untranslatable, I don't know.
At their best these poems fuse a certain cleverness with the undeniable language of loss during periods or areas of transition.
dreaming language
my small tongue dreams up
a land where it builds nests of words
to swarm out over the borders
that are not its own. it wants
to outgrow itself, to glide through distant
spirit path of water or gas,
to dive down to deep sea vents,
to have a term for every phenomenon
and its dubious shadows, to inhabit
those who speak and write it
as shimmering populations of words, to lay
its larvae in their pores. my language
wants to be unbridled and large, it wants
to leave behind the fears that occupy it,
all those stories, dark and bright,
in which its worth and weight
is questioned. only when it dreams
does it soar, supple and light,
by its very nature nearly song.
Haderlap writes in German but she was born into the Slovenian-speaking minority of Carinthia. So clearly the borders of language and identity and violence are where her work comes alive. At least that's how I felt about these poems.
I will say, however, that quite a few of these bounced off of me. They felt overly intellectual, cold, and disconnected. That might be an intended effect or it might be something untranslatable, I don't know.
November 22, 2021
I liked that these poems come back again and again to ideas of translation, language, and home as both location and concept (among other themes). I also enjoyed the way some of the poems are presented as folkloric stories. They presented a nice way to emphasize some of the themes. There's also the idea throughout the collection of power exerted upon the speaker and their subjects. "Borderlands" is a good example of this.
November 27, 2025
DNF - got halfway through; I know it’s a book largely about what gets lost in translation but I’m like how much was literally lost in the translation of this book? It feels intellectualized to a fault, the writing doesn’t really flow, the poems are cold and distant, and they leave my brain the second I put the book down again.
December 14, 2021
Sometimes I find a book that is just so out there it cannot be said to have anything in common with me. So I let it slide, and don't review it. This isn't one of those cases. I daren't let the fact this is thoroughly pretentious rubbish go unsaid. Consider yourself warned.
March 9, 2022
I received an electronic ARC via NetGalley.
This is a readable collection of poems by a poet I was not previously familiar with. I found some markedly more enjoyable than others, but overall it's a nice translation that isn't entirely to my taste, but that certainly doesn't make it bad.
This is a readable collection of poems by a poet I was not previously familiar with. I found some markedly more enjoyable than others, but overall it's a nice translation that isn't entirely to my taste, but that certainly doesn't make it bad.
April 24, 2025
No pude conectar con la poesía, ya sea porque no me llegó o porque intentaba usar palabras para parecer "intelectual".
Que si escribe bien? Si, lo hace, pero aún así no me llegó el mensaje que quería dar, no me llegó la pasión.
Que si escribe bien? Si, lo hace, pero aún así no me llegó el mensaje que quería dar, no me llegó la pasión.
May 17, 2025
Poetry can be hard for me. While I can appreciate poems in the reading, they rarely stay with me. I enjoyed this small book of poems; my favorite was titled "transit." But all of the poems were evocative.
December 4, 2021
Trying too hard to make "smart" sounding poetry
December 23, 2022
A really strong 4 stars, with some really top-tier 5 star poems.
September 1, 2025
Distant Transit weaves together the fragmented lives of Slovenian-speaking Carinthians, capturing the essence of a community caught in the space between past and present, tradition and modernity.
Haderlap’s prose is both lyrical and dense, reminiscent of a tapestry where each thread of narrative is meticulously interwoven with the others. The book does not follow a linear path but rather circles around themes of displacement, identity, and the haunting echoes of World War II. Through a series of vignettes, Haderlap explores the lives of characters who are as much defined by their language and folklore as by the landscapes they inhabit.
The narrative voice is reflective, often stepping back to observe the broader implications of personal stories against the backdrop of cultural and geographical transition. The setting, the Carinthian mountains, is not just a backdrop but a character in its own right, influencing the lives and decisions of the people it shelters. The book’s strength lies in its portrayal of how identity is both shaped by and shapes the environment, with the mountains and valleys echoing the internal landscapes of the characters.
However, this is not an easy read. Haderlap demands attention to detail and a willingness to engage with an associative rather than a chronological structure. Some readers might find the pacing slow, as the book lingers on moments to explore the layers of meaning beneath them. Yet, this is precisely what makes it compelling for those who appreciate literature that challenges conventional forms.
Haderlap’s prose is both lyrical and dense, reminiscent of a tapestry where each thread of narrative is meticulously interwoven with the others. The book does not follow a linear path but rather circles around themes of displacement, identity, and the haunting echoes of World War II. Through a series of vignettes, Haderlap explores the lives of characters who are as much defined by their language and folklore as by the landscapes they inhabit.
The narrative voice is reflective, often stepping back to observe the broader implications of personal stories against the backdrop of cultural and geographical transition. The setting, the Carinthian mountains, is not just a backdrop but a character in its own right, influencing the lives and decisions of the people it shelters. The book’s strength lies in its portrayal of how identity is both shaped by and shapes the environment, with the mountains and valleys echoing the internal landscapes of the characters.
However, this is not an easy read. Haderlap demands attention to detail and a willingness to engage with an associative rather than a chronological structure. Some readers might find the pacing slow, as the book lingers on moments to explore the layers of meaning beneath them. Yet, this is precisely what makes it compelling for those who appreciate literature that challenges conventional forms.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews