Margit Schreiner
No Room Left
fiction
176pp (38,000 words)
English sample translation (PDF)
>> Longlisted for the Austrian Book Prize
»The things you collect over the course of a life!« Notes, diaries, letters, newspaper articles, photos, all sorts of bits and bobs. Where do you put it all? With a wonderful gift for exaggeration and a sharp eye, Margit Schreiner depicts the overabundance that confronts us day by day. Nobody is spared: Bruno has to rent a whole library room to store all his documents. Hans and Maria don’t buy anything new, but nor do they throw anything out. Rudi and Franca live in a spacious yet jam-packed castle on the Lago Maggiore. Clearing out – and tidying up – are the only remedy, although even this encourages the acquisition of new possessions, both useful and useless.
NO ROOM LEFT: An entertaining and thought-provoking novel about the lack of space in our world. Schreiner traces a broad arc, from writers who live like hoarders to problems with rubbish disposal in Italy. Using Japan as an example, she explores the absurd consequences of a lack of space for the whole structure of society. And if you think you can flee to the Himalayas or the Canadian wilderness, you’re very much mistaken – no matter which way you look at it, there’s simply no room left.
»The world is too full, too ailing. Surely nobody could contradict Margit Schreiner in her dissection of our lives, of our aging, of our lack of breathing space. It is as she describes: human beings are inherently unsuited to the world. The novel reads so hilariously elegantly, so light-footedly and flexibly, but then you stumble across a sentence that gives you pause, that trips you up, makes you think it can’t be right. That’s Schreiner’s tone, her melody, her cosmos. First the extravagant lightness – and then the slap. You feel it against your cheekbone, and it burns.«
Zsusza Bánk
Reviews
»A sweeping statement on the country and its people, relationships, family, travelling, writing and aging, as only Austrian writers can deliver it.«
Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung
»Schreiner has the darkest sense of humor since her compatriot Thomas Bernhard.«
Melanie Weidemüller, Deutschlandfunk
»A novel that cleverly demonstrates: a society working on the abolition of empathy, is working towards self-destruction.«
Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF TV)
»The book becomes more and more of a reckoning with a world that reduces mankind to merely functioning and being efficient.«
Österreichischer Rundfunk
»A literary cleanup (...) Entertaining and smart.«
Manuela Reichart, Deutschlandfunk Kultur
"Great thoughtfulness is subject to this ironic band."
Sylvia Treudl, Buchkultur
»A play with the absurd and the paradox, with the casual phrasing of colloquial language, the pointed exaggeration, a humour that quickly tips to the dark side.«
»As fun as it is to read NO ROOM LEFT, the attentive reader will not miss the darker, more serious nuances in it.«
Christian Schacherreiter, OÖNachrichten
»The book is about nothing less than an alarming panorama of civilisational complaints by Western societies.«
Mia Eidlhuber, Der Standard
»NO ROOM LEFT, states Margit Schreiner in her new novel in which she satirically and self-ironically examines herself and her contemporaries.«
Wolfgang Huber-Lang, APA
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