Literaturfest: »DIE LEBENSENTSCHEIDUNG« ROBERT MENASSE

In the organizer's words:

Can you decide about your life? Not about the end, but about continuing to live by force of will? With existential force and yet light-footedness, Robert Menasse tells the story of a race against death in his sophisticated and artful novel.

A man makes a radical change: he leaves his job at the European Commission, travels to Vienna and conceals his early retirement from his 89-year-old mother. But when he receives a devastating diagnosis, he begins a race against time. The diagnosis: cancer, and it is unrealistic to expect him to live another year. And suddenly it's all about sparing his mother the pain of watching her son die: "For him, survival could only mean outliving his mother. To hide his illness from her until she died. It was now a fight for survival. That was now the life choice."

The great Austrian storyteller argues elegantly and philosophically about how free we really are when it comes to survival (Suhrkamp).