Gabriele Petricek has devoted herself to the subject of blame and failure in three novels whose synopsis becomes evident as a triptych.

The central theme that connects the three narratives is the question about the relationship between life and art and about the strategies that bring art into life and life into art.

There are people who come out of the skies yet are not angelic or innocent, vested with talents yes, but characterised by fateful circumstances they themselves bring about. They are afflicted by life.

Petricek’s artificial and graphic descriptions of landscapes and weather patterns are more than harmonious transparencies for the psychological precipices of the protagonists. She follows the intricate paths of her figures in poetically high-brow and charged language.

Geoffrey C. Howes is a translator, writer, and retired professor in Bowling Green, Ohio, USA. He has published translated books by Robert Musil, Jürg Laederach, and Peter Rosei, and shorter translations of many other (mostly Austrian) writers. He is an assistant editor of No Man’s Land(www.no-mans-land.org) and a regular contributor to Versopolis(www.versopolis.com). He has also coordinated a writer-in-residence program at Bowling Green State University and published widely on Austrian literature. From 2000 to 2005 he was co-editor (with Jacqueline Vansant) of Modern Austrian Literature.