Haderlap is an accomplished poet, and that lyricism leaves clear traces
on this ravishing debut, which won the prestigious Bachmann Prize in
2011. The descriptions are sensual, and the unusual similes and
metaphors occasionally change perspective unexpectedly. Angel of
Oblivion deals with harrowing subjects - murder, torture, persecution
and discrimination of an ethnic minority - in intricate and lyrical
prose.
The novel tells the story of a family from the Slovenian minority in
Austria. The first-person narrator starts off with her childhood
memories of rural life, in a community anchored in the past. Yet behind
this rural idyll, an unresolved conflict is smouldering. At first, the
child wonders about the border to Yugoslavia, which runs not far away
from her home. Then gradually the stories that the adults tell at every
opportunity start to make sense. All the locals are scarred by the war.
Her grandfather, we find out, was a partisan fighting the Nazis from
forest hideouts. Her grandmother was arrested and survived Ravensbrück.
As the narrator grows older, she finds out more. Through conversations
at family gatherings and long nights talking to her grandmother, she
learns that her father was arrested by the Austrian police and
tortured - at the age of ten - to extract information on the whereabouts
of his father. Her grandmother lost her foster-daughter and many friends
and relatives in Ravensbrück and only escaped the gas chamber by hiding
inside the camp itself. The narrator begins to notice the frequent
suicides and violent deaths in her home region, and she develops an eye
for how the Slovenians are treated by the majority of German-speaking
Austrians. As an adult, the narrator becomes politicised and openly
criticises the way in which Austria deals with the war and its own Nazi
past. In the closing section, she visits Ravensbrück and finds it
strangely lifeless - realising that her personal memories of her
grandmother are stronger.
Illuminating an almost forgotten chapter of European history and the
European present, the book deals with family dynamics scarred by war and
torture - a dominant grandmother, a long-suffering mother, a violent
father who loves his children but is impossible to live with. And
interwoven with this is compelling reflection on storytelling: the
narrator hoping to rid herself of the emotional burden of her past and
to tell stories on behalf of those who cannot.
