Burning Fields

• Winner of the Austrian Book Prize 2024
• The novel "Wilderer" was honoured with the Bavarian Book Prize
  
• Reinhard Kaiser-Mühlecker is translated into French, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Turkish, Croatian.

English Sample Translation available

Darkness lurks behind the rural idyll

At 18 Luisa Fischer learns that her father Bob is not her biological father and realises that the affection she feels for him goes beyond a daughter's love. She leaves her home and her family and after restless years in various cities, settles in Hamburg. Many years and two children later, Luisa's stepfather suddenly appears on her doorstep; he has decided against the family and in favour of a life with her. Luisa returns with him to Austria, where he single-handedly wants to bring about compensatory justice: Bob robs farming families that were involved in National Socialism in order to donate the looted profit to Israel. But he is killed during one of these robberies. Luisa then starts a relationship with Ferdinand, an old childhood acquaintance, who lives alone with his son Anton. Luisa and Ferdinand want to build a new life together, however, doubts about each other's sincerity arise time and time again, they stalk each other and tension becomes unbearable. 

Can the shadows and burdens of the past be shed? And is it possible to reinvent oneself in every new phase of life? Who are we when we renounce our past? Luisa's answer to all these questions leads to her decision to become a writer, and she begins to tell her own story.

"One of the greatest living German-language authors." - Christoph Schröder, Hessischer Rundfunk

"Kaiser-Mühlecker has come up with some original, bizarre, dramatic twists" - Frankfurter Rundschau, Judith von Sternburg

"The style and subject matter of his novels make Reinhard Kaiser-Mühlecker one of the most unusual and interesting German-language authors" - taz, Joel Fokke

"with an irritatingly beautiful language" - Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Paul Jandl

"Reinhard Kaiser-Mühlecker transforms the world he lives in into quiet and at the same time magnificent literature." - Rainer Moritz, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

"Reinhard Kaiser-Mühlecker cuts a swathe through the Upper Austrian literary landscape with his books." - Der Standard, Mia Eidlhuber

"Highly readable. The author's proven great linguistic mastery is able to capture the finest nuances and shifts in people's emotional and moodal lives" - hr2 Kultur - Neue Bücher, Martin Maria Schwarz