Female friendships in hard times

God should protect you from everything that is still happiness, said Friedrich Torberg’s famous aunt Jolesch. Mali is “so lucky” because at least she has her aunt Ada in Vienna, with whom she can find refuge. But what the young woman has behind her is sheer misfortune. In love for the first time in her life – head over heels – she becomes pregnant by her boyfriend Roland. Roland separates from Mali, not out of sheer ruthlessness, but because of fateful circumstances, and she flees her Czech home village in a hurry. A few days later the Red Army marched in. It’s the year 1945.

In Vienna, Mali meets another young woman. In self-defense, Vera killed an American soldier who wanted to rape her. She was able to escape unnoticed and is now finding refuge with Mali, who can use a reliable roommate to look after her little Robert. There is a second accomplice, but you can rely on Grete’s silence in solidarity.

Grete works as an interpreter for the US Army and dreams of one day living in glamorous New York. For the time being she has to be content with the Viennese foretaste of the American way of life: army bars and dance music, oranges and nylon stockings. Admittedly, such privileges have their price, but Grete makes sure that it is not too high, because she actually loves women. No easy tightrope walk!

In her new novel “Dragonflies in Winter”, Gudrun Seidenauer tells the story of an unusual female friendship that begins as a partnership of convenience for hard times, but lasts for decades. From changing perspectives, she not only illuminates the life paths of the three women and Robert’s difficult path to adulthood, but also the social conditions in which the four biographies are anchored.

One no longer imagines the legal and social discrimination that lesbian women like Grete were exposed to in the post-war period. In the 1960s, modernization and liberalization were announced, at least tentatively. The economic situation also improves and in the decade of the economic miracle the three friends go on vacation to Italy.

In the last chapter of the novel, ninety-year-old Mali lives in a retirement home. Her nurse is called Manal, a woman who managed to escape from Syria after terrible experiences. She was also “lucky” in the sense of Aunt Jolesch. And so the wide epic arc closes.

• Readings in Upper Austria: August 16th in the Federal Institute for Adult Education in St. Wolfgang, October 20th in the city library in Eferding, always at 7 p.m