Protest is in the air and on the ground

I´ve neglected my blog due to some health niggles and frustration with the political status quo, as well as a spate of rejections, and also accepting the fact that I do not fit in whichever way I  try and turn, and I wonder if that is not such a bad thing.  But I was a bit out and about to attend two very different book launches, which may serve to sum up my perceived dilemma.

On 29 September in a packed Café Haller in the third district, I saw and heard the inimitable Daniela Kickl launch her books of letters to her cousin Herbert. (Herbert Kickl is the former chief propagandist of the right-wing party (FPÖ) and current Interior Minister of the watered-down conservative party in coalition with FPÖ in another blue, albeit turquoise, redux of what Austria has been and is again becoming.) The unique situation of being the cousin of such a man made Daniela feel accounts must be kept, for in this time of fake news so much is said and later denied. Daniela, in her letters to cousin Herbert, employs rigour and wit, and it is the tongue in cheek humour that makes her words so pointed, and sincere.  If you read German, do check out her website  where you can also find what really goes on inside an apple, not the fruit, the company

4 October heralded the start of the Thursday protests against the right-wing coalition government of Sebastian Kurz, that first were held during the right-wing government of Wolfgang Schüssel. Nobel Prize winner, Elfriede Jelinek, kicked things off with a new text (in German). I was unable to attend, but the robust Thursday protests against fascism and racism will continue.

Robustness was also apparent that same evening in the stories of Catherine McNamara, whose collection, The Cartography of Others, I was happy to launch at Shakespeare & Company Booksellers in Vienna´s first district.

Hilary Mantel says: “McNamara´s work has a fierce, vital beat…stories are robust yet finely worked…fiction that can stand up in any company.” Catherine is an Australian based in Italy and this is her third book.

On the writing front, there has been a spate of rejections, but they just make me strong in my resolve to do my own thing learning and writing.

In the light of the cancerous spread of right-wing power to so many countries I wondered how complicit, wittingly or not, intergovernmental organisatons such as the ITU were and are in what is happening today as outlined in Ryan Broderick´s article.

But on a more positive note let me direct you to a short blog post by my  good friend in Puerto Rico while I go and get some shocking pink wool to knit myself a cap for the Thursday protests with the Grannies against the Right, and so leave you, as ever, with

Onwards!