Background

Peter Rosei was born on June 17, 1946, in Vienna, Austria.

Education

Rosei attended the University of Vienna, where he earned a doctorate in law in 1968.

Career

Rosei worked as a secretary to a renowned artist, Ernst Fuchs, until 1971, when he took a job as director of a textbook publishing firm. A year later, he quit that job as well as in order to relocate to a small village near Salzburg, where he spent the next nine years living in relative isolation in an old farmhouse and producing the first of his two-dozen-plus novels. These early works were rife with morbid themes and images of death and destruction. The collection of short stories in his debut volume, Landstriche (“Tracts of Land”), are essentially fables about humankind and the individual’s desire to exercise control over another.

Rosei’s debut novel was the 1973 effort Bei schwebendem Verfcihren (“Pending Proceedings”), which he attempted to write in the style of Franz Kafka. After the publication of another volume of short stories in 1974, Wege (“Ways”), Rosei began what Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor Acker deemed the middle period of his career, which concentrated on the aimless traveler and the pursuit of the ultimate personal freedom. This phase began with the 1975 work Entwurffuer eine Welt ohne Menschen, Entwurf z.u einer Reise ohne Ziel (“Plan for a World without People, Plan for a Trip without a Goal”). His literary breakthrough came with the novel Wer war Edgar Allan (Who was Edgar Allan) in 1977, which was filmed by the Austrian director Michael Haneke, with a screenplay by Rosei, in 1984.

Rosei's prolific output includes the novels Die Milchstrasse (The Milky Way, 1981), Rebus (1990), and Persona (1995), as well as a six-part novel cycle titled Das 15 000-Seelen-Projekt (The 15,000 Souls Project) from 1984-1988. In 2005 he published a panoramic novel of Vienna during the postwar period, Wien Metropolis (Metropolis Vienna).

Works that have been translated into English include Von hier nach dort (1978) (From Here to There, translated by Kathleen Thorpe, 1991), Das schnelle Glück (1980) (Try Your Luck, translated by Kathleen Thorpe, 1994), and Ruthless and Other Writings (translated by Geoffrey Howes, 2003), all published by Ariadne Press. And Wien Metropolis (2005) (Metropolis Vienna, translated by Geoffrey C Howes, published by Green Integer in 2009).

Achievements

• Austrian novelist Peter Rosei is the creator of dark, pessimist literature that strives to portray the essentially existentialist nature of humankind - that the individual is truly alone, and that any attempts to counter this state are an act of rebellion against nature itself. A prolific writer, Rosei had won critical plaudits for his works since the early 1970s, but commercial success has proved more elusive.
  
  

Works

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  • Wer war Edgar Allan? / Von Hier nach Dort / Das schnelle Glück. 1978
  • Nennt mich Tommy 1978
  • Alben 1979
  • Regentagstheorie: 59 Gedichte 1979
  • Das Lächeln des Jungen: 59 Gedichte 1979
  • Das schnelle Glück: Roman 1980
  • Die Milchstrasse: Sieben Bücher 1981
  • Versuch, die Natur zu kritisieren: Essays 1982
  • Reise ohne Ende: Aufzeichnungsbücher 1983
  • Mann & Frau 1984
  • Komödie 1984
  • Franz und ich: Erzählungen und Essays 1985
  • Die Wolken 1986
  • Der Aufstand 1987
  • Unser Landschaftsbericht 1988
  • Rebus 1990
  • Fliegende Pfeile: Aus den Reiseaufzeichnungen 1993
  • Beitrage zu einer Poesie der Zukunft 1995
  • Persona 1995
  • Verzauberung: Vier Texte 1997
  • Naturverstrickt: Essays, samt einem Duett mit Redmond O'Hanlon 1998
  • Viel früher: Gedichte 1998

Views

Rosei's fictional texts portray the limits of knowledge and the discrepancies between thought and action in Western society.

Connections

Brother:

Franz Rosei

References

• DLB 85: Austrian Fiction Writers after 1914 World War I marked the close of an era for the vast, powerful and diverse Austro-Hungarian empire. By the end of the war, a population of nearly fifty million people had been reduced to fewer than eight million. Writers of the early postwar period tended to be nostalgic for Austrias former imperial greatness.
  1989