System of Vienna: From Heaven Street to Earth Mound Square

An astonishing and fantastical autobiographical novel--reminiscent of Italo Calvino and Laurence Sterne--The System of Vienna details Jonke's travels through Vienna by streetcar, reporting the bizarre and frustrating encounters he experiences as he progresses--and meanwhile moving not just from trolley-stop to trolley-stop, but through life as well, from innocence to disillusionment, birth to death. Jonke meets a paranoiac fish wholesaler who believes he is directing all of Austrian politics from his little stall, a stamp collector in such deadly earnest he hopes to be appointed to a professorship in philately, and a compulsive talker who has developed a rigorous economic philosophy out of the most common objects to be found in a Vienna neighborhood. Slowly increasing the comic and fantastic elements in his story until they overwhelm all pretense to autobiography--culminating in a strangely touching love scene between Jonke and a caryatid--The System of Vienna reminds us that the very act of describing a life turns it into fiction.

"He played with language like a child with soap bubbles, but the bubbles contained extremely refined and precise thought instead of air." Elfriede Jelinek, author of < em=""> The Piano Teacher < m=""> and < em=""> Greed < m="">

"In wild thunderstorms of language Jonke released a nearly indescribable energy with power enough to topple the whole world . . . He was the heir to such disparate ancestors as Borges and Robert Walser." Ronald Pohl

"The System of Vienna, with its commanding cadences, self-absorbed insistence, and entrancing repetitions, not to mention its childlike surrender to fantasy, is boundless fiction that both puzzles and entertains." John Madera

"Gert Jonke was one of the great innovators of late 20th and early 21st Century literature and, for the English-speaking world, each additional translated work is more supporting evidence that Jonke's place is secure." The Millions

"This richly imaginative book fits fifteen chapters into ninety-eight pages (minus an elegant afterword by Kling). Most chapters in this autobiographical novella focus on a spot in Vienna, and they're recalled in sequence from the narrator's birth through adulthood as he meets odd people who strive to convey knowledge about politics, society, love, and human perception. Jonke's writing isn't difficult, though his sentences can stretch on into multi-page masterpieces, and he's a fan of word games and surreal imagery." Matthew Jakubowski, The Quarterly Conversation (read the entire Quarterly Conversation review)

Half philosopher and half clown-prince, Gert Jonke is Austria's comic gift to contemporary fiction.

Gert Jonke is counted among Austria's most important authors and dramatists. Among other prizes, he received the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, the Erich Fried Prize, and the Grand Austrian State Prize for Literature. He died in 2009 at the age of 62.Vincent Kling is professor of German and comparative literature at La Salle University in Philadelphia.