AustLit

Epigraph:
The mere mention of the word reality generally causes discomfort. Reality - it sounds like dentistry; and the visit to the dentist one postpones, if possible, although one knows that delay is pointless. Contemporary man believes that reality is ugly and tortuous, to be kept at a distance. The reality of everyday life is so close, one's own problems and worries so permanent that it seems too much for one to absorb other realities. But foreign realities only seem foreign, just as distance only seems to be distant. There is nothing which does not touch us. In other words, everything concerns us.
-Extract from an essay by Heinrich Böll, 1953.

Contents indexed selectively.