A new novel

Kurt Palm: War, flight and the power of chance

Kurt Palm has written books about Brecht, Stifter, Joyce, Mozart, soccer and Palm Saturdays - and now about himself and his family of origin.(Bild: www.corn.at Heribert CORN)

Kurt Palm is a director of films, operas and writers. And a rebel. But now, for the first time, he is devoting himself intensively to his own family history in order to finally look at what has long remained in the shadows. In September, Palm opens his new book "Trockenes Feld" at the Stifterhaus in Linz.

Some ended up in Brazil, others in Linz or the Hausruckviertel. More precisely, in Timelkam. These included Kurt Palm's parents, who had to flee Slavonia in what is now Croatia during the turmoil of the Second World War.

The fact that they came to Austria was a coincidence, as was the fact that they stayed here, because - like many German-speaking displaced persons from Slavic countries in south-eastern and central Europe - they were initially stateless.

Searching for their own traces
If they had moved on, Palm's life would probably have been different, muses the 69-year-old author in his new book "Trockenes Feld" (Leykam, € 25.50). He calls it a "novel", but it is an autobiography that is less concerned with historical facts than with his own identity. His parents' biographies were of little importance to him for a long time; they were simply his parents.

The "skeletons in the closet"
It was only after their deaths that Palm began to think about his origins, his experiences of flight, perpetration and being a follower. Palm would be unfaithful to himself if he did not also draw a bow to the bloodthirsty country life: to the ministry, to rebellion in youth, to the concept of home with the ruthless motto "Everyone has their skeletons in the closet".

As you read, you look back into the past with him and learn a lot about the present. Palm will be reading at the Stifterhaus in Linz on September 17 (7.30 pm).