»Water runs from the tiles. In front of the house the dog sniffs for traces – a dog that is alike, or the same, or another one. Nothing is only made of skin, nothing lives on its own. She turns off the video, then after all back on.«
Stories,
Ritter Publishers, Klagenfurt, Austria
Published 1999
Soft cover
ISBN: 978-3-85415-238-5
Journeys beneath the Lids of your Eyes
Ulrike Draesner, in these prose narratives, is taking quite a risk. This is not directly in her choice of themes, for the pieces we find here are signposted to take us along unambigous, well-known paths: taking leave of mothers, fathers, ancestors, surrender of identities, dissolution of sexual roles and hierarchies, resistance to the everyday, to urbane prisons and frameworks that society imposes on you, matrices into which one is forced or which one drops out of, according to possibilities and circumstances .. more through the energy of the tension between harmlessness and catastrophe. The stories seldom begin in a harmless way and do usually not immediately issue in catastrophes, however – knives are thrown. But where do they fall?, as the story of the knife-thrower asks.
PRESS COMMENTARIES
„Like the biblical Flood after drought and dust, Ulrike Draesner’s texts overwhelm the plains of the German language. She does not narrate, describe, report. Her prose is lyrical poetry; her language elemental. Its power derives from concentration, from distilling down the core that is reality. The more compressed, the more explosive. (…)“
Beatrix Langner, New Zurich News (28.09.1999 )
LINKS