New Austria, Old Roots: Writers of Immigrant Origin in Austria

Austria is a latecomer in the field of research on immigrant and ethnic-minority literature. Only since the mid-1990s, with initiatives such as the literary prize schreiben zwischen den kulturen (writing between cultures) and the success of writers such as Vladimir Vertlib and Dimitré Dinev, both the general and the academic interest in immigrant authors have increased, also as a kind of counter movement against the growing xenophobia at the time. Research on immigrant authors in Austria broadly speaking draws on two strands of earlier analyses: first, it adopts concepts from the debate on immigrant authors in Germany. Second, it builds on ideas developed within English cultural studies. More recent works have pleaded for immigrant and ethnic-minority authors to no longer be treated as a separate category but as an intregral part of Austrian literature.