Amicale

The Consulate General of Austria is organising a literary evening #LireNotreEurope, which will take place on Monday 10 June at 6pm in the Salon Bleu of the Consulate General. This will be an opportunity to hear selected extracts and to talk to Valérie Fritsch about her novel, which has been shortlisted for the third European Romance Novel Prize 2024/2025, and about her experiences as a writer. With the participation of her translator Tatjana Marwinski.

Registration required:

by email to strassburg-gk@bmeia.gv.at  or by telephone on 0033 (0)3.88.35.13.94 (limited number of places)

About the book

Winter's Garden is the name of the idyllic colony beyond the city, where everything grows and flourishes, plants and animals alike, where old people sit on the veranda in the evening playing the violin, where parents cradle their babies and farm dogs lick blood from children's bruised knees. The winter garden is the nostalgic place where Anton, the bird breeder, returns with his wife Frederike after years in the city, where everything is in motion and changing: houses and streets are falling into down, wild animals are invading gardens and backyards, and people's sleep is heavy with dreams in which life as they have known it until now ceases to exist. The young Austrian author Valerie Fritsch writes with powerful language and sensual images about a world spinning out of control. And about two people who fall madly in love when the present holds no promise and the future is likely to remain a dream.

Valérie Fritsch, born in 1989, works as a freelance writer and travels the world. She won the Kelag Prize and the People's Choice Award at the 2015 Ingeborg Bachmann Competition. In 2020 she was awarded the Brüder Grimm Prize for Literature. She lives in Graz and Vienna.