Erstellt am: 21. 11. 2014 - 20:15 Uhr

Doron Rabinovici and the questions we can't answer

Saturday on FM4 Reality Check: A chat with the Jewish-Austrian author of "Ohnehin" and "Andernorts". At a table in the corner of Vienna's Radio Café, we discussed what it means to be a 'Jewish' writer in the context of contemporary Austrian society.

This year, I attended the 13th International Conference on the Short Story in English, which was co-hosted by the University of Vienna; every two years, it is held in a different city around the world. I'd been turned on to it by a writer friend of mine who lives here. As a result of his suggestion that I come and take part, I had the privilege of making the acquaintance of such esteemed authors as Bharati Mukherjee, Robert Olen Butler, Judith Nika Pfeiffer, and many others.

Johnny Bliss, 2014

I also met Doron Rabinovici (see above and below), who was one of a small contingent of Austrian authors present whose work has been translated into English and other languages; born in Tel Aviv in 1961, Doron has nevertheless been living in Vienna since 1964, and his work speaks to me, perhaps partly because his writing is often informed by the question of what comprises "home" and identity, topics I also have spent a lot of time thinking about.

From his short story collection Papirnik to books like Ohnehin and Andernorts, the question of what it means to be a person at all, let alone a Jewish person in the context of contemporary Austrian society, often comes up in his work.

But what drives Doron Rabinovici to sit down in front of his computer each day and write? Why is the short story a good format for telling certain kinds of symbolically meaningful stories and not for others? What questions are Doron Rabinovici posing with his current work, and how likely does he consider it that he will ever find any answers?

In order to go deeper down those rabbit holes, the two of us sat down at Vienna's ORF Radio Cafe for an earnest discussion of the value of cultural context and symbolism in the writing of fiction.

Johnny Bliss, 2014

A FM4 Reality Check Saturday Special on Saturday, November 22nd

If you miss the program, you can still stream it via the Reality Check podcast or at fm4.ORF.at/7tage.

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Special thanks are due to Ryder K. Hawkins, without whose "hot tip" I never would have visited the 13th International Conference on the Short Story in English, let alone met Doron Rabinovici, written this article, or produced this program. Special thanks are also due to the author Sylvia Petter, who introduced me to Doron Rabinovici after the conference.