The German Book Office in New York City has chosen Angel of Oblivion by Maja Haderlap, translated by Tess Lewis (Archipelago, $18, 9780914671466), as its August Pick of the Month.
The GBO described the book this way: "Angel of Oblivion tells the story of past and present life among the Slovenian-speaking minority population in southern Austria. Influenced by the author's own life, the book follows the experiences of a first-person narrator from childhood to maturity, focusing on her quest for identity as she is caught between the Slovenian and German languages, cultures and histories. Growing up, the protagonist is dragged further into memories of the past, particularly of how her family was affected by the Nazi regime: her grandfather joined the partisans, her grandmother was interned in the concentration camp in Ravensbrück, and her father was tortured as a child."
Maja Haderlap is Carinthian-Slovene Austrian writer and translator with a Ph.D. in Theater Studies from the University of Vienna. She won the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis and the Rauriser Literaturpreis for Angel of Oblivion, which is her debut novel.
Tess Lewis is an advisory editor for the Hudson Review and a translator of French and German literature. She has received many grants for her translation work and writes essays on European literature for multiple literary journals.
