Esteemed Austrian writer Lilian Faschinger is visiting Bowdoin this week as a guest of the German Department. On Wednesday evening, she gave a public reading in the Beam Classroom. The audience was mostly made up of people who spoke at least some German, but Faschinger read a charming short story from her newest book auf Englisch.
The book, Paarweise, is set in Paris, where Faschinger lived for four years in the 90s. She described her book as an "homage" to the city. It contains eight stories, linked by one character from each story reappearing in the next, the last story finally tying back to the first. The circular structure was borrowed from turn-of-the-century Austrian literary giant Arthur Schnitzler's play Reigen (also known as La Ronde or Hands Around).
"What interested me was the interchange between people, how they meet or miss each other or touch briefly or clash," said Faschinger of the book's concept. "I wanted to show a panorama of the city from a bird's eye perspective."
The story told the tale of a woman who tricks her separated husband into returning by making him jealous, and included her interactions with her old father, who misses his late parakeet.
Paarweise has not yet been fully translated into English, but three of Faschinger's books have been published in English and are available from the Hawthorne-Longfellow Library's display alcove. Magdalena the Sinner, her most successful book, has been translated into 16 languages.
Faschinger was born in Carinthia, Austria in 1950 and currently lives in Vienna. She said that she had an "artistic streak" in her that could have led her in other directions such as painting or music, but eventually manifested itself through writing, perhaps because she studied English literature at Karl Franzens University in Graz, Austria, where she obtained a Ph. D.
Faschinger started writing seriously in her late twenties and wrote mainly poetry at first before delving into short prose and novels. She has also translated English works into German, although she now concentrates on her own writing.
Faschinger has been a writer-in-residence or visiting professor at Dartmouth and Dickinson Colleges and Washington University in St. Louis, and is currently the writer-in-residence at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. This is her first visit to Maine, though she is no stranger to New England, having been an exchange student in Connecticut for a year in high school.
Faschinger will also work with students in German classes this week.