“Gerhard Roth has left us. His prose explored the Austrian, sometimes painful, never unfair, but always of the highest literary quality.”
With these words, Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen paid tribute to the writer Gerhard Roth, who died yesterday at the age of 79 in his hometown of Graz after a long illness.
The author leaves behind an extensive, multifaceted oeuvre. With his novel cycles “Archive des Schweigen” and “Orkus” he created central works of Austrian post-war literature. His list of publications also testifies to extensive photographic endeavors. Pictures from his research trips, for example in the volumes “Über Land und Meer”, “Atlas der Stille” or “Im invisible Vienna”, have resulted in extensive pictorial narratives that have accompanied his novels. Roth initially studied medicine in Graz from 1961 at the will of his father, a doctor, but dropped out in 1967. From 1966 to 1977 he worked as a programmer and head of organization in the Graz computer computing center in order to earn his living alongside his writing. From the early 1970s he published experimental prose (about 1972 “the autobiography of albert einstein”) and tried his hand as a playwright (including “Lichtenberg”, “Twilight”).
chronicler of populism
A generous advance from S.Fischer Verlag enabled him to concentrate fully on his work on the “Archives of Silence”. In 1980 the first book, “The Quiet Ocean” was published – a film adaptation by Xaver Schwarzenberger won the Silver Berlinale Bear in 1983. The center of the cycle, composed of the most diverse literary genres, in which fiction and (also photographic) documentation flow together, is the 800-page book “Common Death”, published in 1984. In 1991 the cycle was completed with “The Story of Darkness”. With “Der See”, the first novel in his new cycle “Orkus”, Roth caused a stir in the FPÖ in 1995, which recognized Jörg Haider in a populist politician who was almost assassinated. Roth then expanded his locations to include Japan, Greece, the Balkans, Egypt, Vienna and Madeira with “Der Plan” (1998) and “Der Berg” (2000), “Der Strom” (2002) and “Das Labyrinth” (2005). and Madrid. This was followed by the volume of essays “Die Stadt”, “Das Alphabet der Zeit” and in 2011 a large final volume with “Orkus. Reise zu den Toten”.
“I’ve had a load off my body and my mind, but the two novel cycles will always remain parts of me,” Roth said. “Every word has become a cell in my body, so to speak, every literary figure a formative memory.” His last work was published last year, the finale of the Venice trilogy “There is no angel worse than love”.
Source: Nachrichten
