Thomas Sautner

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Thomas Sautner (* 1970 in Gmünd ) is an Austrian writer .

Life and literary work

Thomas Sautner grew up in the Lower Austrian Waldviertel near the Czech border and after studying political science and contemporary history in Vienna initially worked as a journalist . In 2006 his first novel Fuchserde was published , which is set in the Waldviertel and is about the Yeniche : Sautner contrasts the exclusion and persecution of this traveling people with a wisdom that has grown out of a deep closeness to nature.

In his novel Milchblume , published in 2007 , Sautner shifts his perspective to the sedentary population of the Waldviertel: During the action set in the 1950s, abysses of wickedness and violence reveal themselves, which especially endanger Jakob, who is reviled as a village idiot. He only gets support from his supposed sister Silvia and from travelers who are tolerated in the village for the duration of the winter work.

With his two subsequent novels, Fremdes Land and Der Glücksmacher , Sautner left the Waldviertel and moved to the big city. In Dystopia Fremdes Land , published in 2010, the protagonists give up their freedom because they are promised security and comfort in return: they willingly have computer chips implanted, even though they lose control of their lives. In the satirical novel Der Glücksmacher , published in 2012, happiness is what people are willing to do anything for: A dreamy insurance employee who prefers to philosophize than to work should develop a concept that guarantees personal happiness for every insurance customer.

In 2013, Sautner returned to his homeland with his fifth book, Waldviertel rock soft . The mixture of legends, anecdotes, stories, recipes and essays about the Waldviertel, its history and its typical "ingredients" result in a personal portrait of a region that is often reviled as "Kaltviertel", but leaves no one indifferent.

The novel The Elder , published in 2015, also takes place in the author's homeland. Old Lisbeth lives in a clearing in the forest, to whom people come when the doctors no longer have any advice. The healer, who was once deported to a concentration camp because of her Yenish origins, is also the last hope for Sophie, who has cancer. At first skeptical, the working mother leaves the stress of her urban everyday life behind within a few days, experiences the healing power of nature and learns how a life can succeed. The disgruntled raven Kurt finds out in the humorous picture book Rabenduft , which was illustrated by Thomas Kriebaum and published in 2016, that it can be much better if you look at it positively .

Why we so often divide the world and existence into here and there, this side and the other, right and wrong, asks Sautner in his novel The Girl on the Border , published in 2017 . It is located in the Waldviertel, in a customs house on the former Austrian-Czechoslovak border, but it's not just about guarding a very specific political border: the first-person narrator Malina, who grew up as the daughter of a customs officer in the late 1980s, always crosses again also your own limits. While the usual things around her "wobble", she immerses herself in the souls of other people, in other worlds and times. In doing so, these categories and with them borders in general are questioned using the example of literature: because it is open to everything, allows everyone to have unlimited adventures in the head at any time and would never claim to be correct, it is most likely to assure people of their identity, recognizes Malina.

Sautner also enables adventures in the head in his novel Grandmother's House , published in 2019, not only for his reading audience, but also for his now grown-up protagonist Malina. She, who always looked for height and stability in books, got a job in a city library as requested, but she earns her living as a waitress in the evenings. As the lover of a married man, she is also unsatisfied in her private life. Suddenly she receives mail from her grandmother, who was believed dead, who sends her a package full of banknotes. Malina goes in search of Kristyna-Grandma and meets all kinds of equally extraordinary men in her house in the middle of the forest. One of them, Jakob, protagonist in Sautner's novel Milchblume , feels a mysterious bond with Malina, but the grandmother, who apparently earns her living by making and trading intoxicating herbal cigarettes, has a disturbingly close relationship for Malina with the much younger man . The intoxication of summer nights and sensory-expanding tobacco products, the center of the universe in the middle of grandmother's house and a valley of poets in the middle of the forest: Malina, who makes novels appear more real than reality, undertakes a journey in this novel that is less related to reality Waldviertel has to do with the possibilities that only literature can offer us.

Books

  • Fox earth , novel. Picus Verlag, Vienna 2006
  • Milk flower , novel. Picus Verlag, Vienna 2007
  • Foreign country , novel. Construction Publishing House, Berlin 2010
  • The luck maker , Roman. Construction Publishing House, Berlin 2012
  • Waldviertel stone soft , literary travel and homeland companion , Picus Verlag, Vienna 2013
  • The oldest , Roman. Picus Verlag, Vienna 2015.
  • The scent of raven , picture book. Illustrated by Thomas Kriebaum. Picus Verlag, Vienna 2016.
  • The girl on the border , Roman. Picus Verlag, Vienna 2017. ISBN 978-3-7117-2047-4 .
  • Grandmother's house , Roman. Picus Verlag, Vienna 2019. ISBN 978-3-7117-2076-4 .

Essays and short stories

  • Divine fun. The standard, 6./7. September 2008
  • The longing to be limited. Die Presse Spectrum, May 8, 2010
  • When the coffee house becomes a "zone". Der Standard, October 1, 2010
  • What we all allow. Die Presse Spectrum, April 23, 2011
  • Europe's democracy in a coma. The standard, 9./10. July 2011
  • Where does happiness live? Der Standard, August 25, 2012
  • Where to go with us Der Standard, December 28, 2013
  • The life of the Neschs . Literature and Criticism No. 491/492, March 2015.
  • Does he have a solution for Europe? Der Standard, February 21, 2015.
  • From us evil right and naive left. Der Standard, September 25, 2015.
  • If we wanted, as we could. The press, October 3, 2015.
  • The voters lost the election. Wiener Zeitung, October 21, 2015.
  • Of the luck to defy the world. Der Standard, December 24, 2015.
  • Have we lost ourselves? The press, January 23, 2016.
  • Hot air wrapped in leather. Der Standard, June 25, 2016.
  • God, Erwin and the world. Der Standard, December 17, 2016.
  • Instructions for use for authors. Der Standard, November 4, 2017.
  • The world may be outside. The press, November 11, 2017.
  • The Lord's Detours. The press, October 21, 2018.
  • New ode to joy. Der Standard, December 29, 2018.
  • This one-way street in my head. The press, February 16, 2019.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Profile entry at Aufbau Verlag In an interview in the Lower Austrian cultural magazine "Der Morgen", Sautner said: "As a journalist I was briefly at 'Profil', then at 'Wirtschaftswoche' and for a long time at 'Wirtschaftsblatt', finally as head of foreign policy But at some point I got bored. I had the feeling that I wasn't learning anything more. The articles that I wrote had too little depth, both in terms of content and style. That's how I got into other writing. " He goes on to say that he quit his job and first went to India. In order to be able to maintain a family with two children, he later had to take on a part-time job in addition to writing. (Interview with Sebastian Fasthuber, Der Morgen 1/2017, p. 8f, here p. 8)
  2. ↑ Entry Fuchserde at Picus Verlag
  3. ↑ Review of Milchblume on literaturkritik.de
  4. ^ Review of Fremdes Land in the Tagesspiegel
  5. ^ Review of the happiness maker in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung
  6. ↑ Review Waldviertel stone soft in Time
  7. ↑ Review The Eldest in the Press
  8. ↑ Review of raven scent in 1000 and 1 book
  9. ^ Review of the girl on the border in the Salzburger Nachrichten
  10. ^ Grandmother's house review in Die Presse
personal data
SURNAME Sautner, Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian painter and writer
DATE OF BIRTH 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH Gmünd (Lower Austria)