Cornelia Travnicek

This thin, socio-critical novel, full of contradictions, oscillates between childhood and adulthood, a fairy tale, brutal reality, and suspense and reflection. Separated from their families in a run-down house on the city’s outskirts, Petru, Cheta, and Magare live as streetwise thieves, skilfully filling the piggy bank of the exploitative Krakadzil, who enforces their obedience through drugs. Cracks begin to appear in the established system when Petru meets a girl, Marja, and a new boy joins the gang for “training.” The author describes this cruel, heartless world with unexpected poetry through the magical eyes of a child, boldly opening up the issue of child crime and the migration crisis.

Published by Prostor, 2022

Cornelia Travnicek (*1987) is an Austrian writer, translator from Chinese, and researcher at the Vienna Centre for Virtual Reality and Visualisation. Her work is characterized by a variety of genres, including four volumes of poetry, two books for children and young adults, several short story collections, and three novels; the first of them, Chucks, was successfully made into a film (2015), and the most recent, Fairy Dust, was nominated for the 2020 Austrian Book Prize.