German professor Edward T. Larkin has published a translation of a work of fiction by Austrian author Eugenie Kain. Kain, daughter of the Austrian author Franz Kain, was interested in marginalized individuals and groups. Recently deceased (1961 - 2010), she was particularly concerned with women’s issues, instances of violence and aggression, environmental degradation, and authoritarianism in her native Linz and elsewhere. Her stories take place in Austria, but their essential features are transnational. Besides this novel, Kain is the author of Atemnot (2001), Hohe Wasser (2004), and Schneckenkoenig (2009) among others.
Whispered Songs
by Eugenie Kain (Author), translated by Edward T. Larkin
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, June 27, 2013
From the publisher: What remains when a loved one has died? Whispered Songs offers an account of a woman's search to find a suitable photo for the obituary of her partner who has just died of cancer. Shifting easily between the heartbreaking perspective of one winter's night and the nameless heroine's detailed memories, Eugenie Kain presents a compelling character, her complicated relationship with her partner, and the social-historical context in which it unfolds. The woman's memories make clear her occasionally tense relationship with her partner, her submissive relationship with her father, and the authoritarianism of the school system. As a counterweight to the forces of oppression, Whispered Songs is suffused with musical images – the singing of a hurled rock across a frozen lake; the spontaneous eruption of choral harmony by a group international researchers; the songs of the heroine's grandmothers as they seek to survive incarceration in the concentration camp Mauthausen; and finally her partner's songs of joy and human companionship. The successful quest for a truthful image of her partner, who is based on the songwriter Gustl Maly, Kain's own life-partner, mirrors the heroine's honest acknowledgement of her loss and ushers in the realization that she does indeed have the wherewithal to move forward with her life. As the possibility of individual development is affirmed, so too is the view that song can facilitate an alternate, more humane social configuration. It is merely a question of finding the right image.
