Droschl is based in Graz, Austria’s “secret capital of literature” and has devoted itself exclusively and with amazing consistency to promoting contemporary authors, including many non-German-speaking writers. The first book was produced in 1980, when the decision was taken to convert Droschl, the gallery-cum-bookshop into a publishing house, primarily for literature. Amongst the first authors Droschl published were such well-established names as Wolfgang Bauer and Bernhard Hüttenegger, soon to be followed by Helmut Eisendle, Gerhard Roth, Klaus Hoffer, Reinhard P.Gruber and Alfred Kolleritsch.
From the start it was clear that Droschl would support above all the rebellious writers, the formal innovators and breakers of tradition. When in 1992 Heimrad Bäcker, the publisher of edition neue texte, Linz, retired, Droschl took over both Bäcker’s approach and his stock, thus emphasizing ist own commitment to experimental language and philosophical-discourse-analytical writing.
Even the first books by writers like Michael Donhauser, Antonio Fian, Eleonore Frey or Peter Waterhouse won critical acclaim and also literary awards. This policy of taking risks with first publications is being continued; Klaus Händl for example was awarded the Rauriser Literaturpreis for his first book (Legenden), Thomas Stangl was awarded the “aspekte-Preis” for the best literary debut (the novel Der einzige Ort), Monique Schwitter was awarded the “Robert Walser Preis” for her literary debut Wenn’s schneit beim Krokodil. And Ernst Jandl, in the Austrian weekly Profil, praises Droschl as a courageous and dynamic exception in the publishing scene.
A further focus of Droschl’s activities is the publication of translations, which started in 1986 with a volume of poetry, entiteled Frisbees, by the Buddhist Giulia Niccolai, the “mother of Italian avantgardists”, and continued with (mostly bilingual) editions of works by Andrea Zanzotto, by young Hungarians such as László Garaczy and Ferenc Szijj, of English (Michael Hamburger, Basil Bunting) and American (Robert Creeley, Paul Bowles) poetry, Moroccan stories (by Mohammed Mrabet and Larbi Layachi), important Eastern European writers such as Oksana Zabuzhko (Ukraine) or Georgi Gospodinov (Bulgaria), and modern classics as Henri Michaux, Julien Gracq, Michel Butor, Michel Leiris, Victor Segalen and Roger Caillois. The names speak for themselves, they stand for an attitude that does not consider literature as representation but as protest and comment from the fringe.
We want to address the reader’s curiosity, those who want to discover something, who focus on words, whose one great love is language, many languages, the innumerable manners of speech.
For further details: www.droschl.com
