Alois Hotschnig - Maybe This Time

By now, he also felt at home at other addresses, and what at first had seemed to happen by chance was now routine.

He entered a building to visit someone, but was stopped by a man who took him for a neighbour and held the lift for him. He got out one floor above the man and went to the flat where someone was meant to be waiting for him, but no one was home. He put the key in the lock, the door opened, and he realized that this flat, too, belonged to him.

After glancing around, he left the building and went along the streets, peering into windows. When he saw windows that were dark, he went into the building and hid in the flat for a while, which then became his flat.

He didn’t return to his own flat for a long time after that night. He moved to new areas, towns and cities, and his key fitted the lock of any door he wished to open. Yet he wanted to return to the place where it all began, to be closer to his own history. At least that is what he thought, regardless of whose flat it might have been or whose life he had lived at the time, or was living now.

AUTHOR

Alois Hotschnig, born in 1959, is one of Austria’s most critically acclaimed authors, eliciting comparison with Franz Kafka and Thomas Bernhard. He has written novels, short stories and plays. His books have won major Austrian and international honours, such as the Italo-Svevo award and the Erich-Fried prize. Maybe This Time was first published in German in 2006.

TRANSLATOR

Tess Lewis has been translating from German and French for two decades. For her translations of Peter Handke, Alois Hotschnig, Pascale Bruckner and Philippe Sollers she has been awarded PEN Translation Fund grants and an NEA Translation Fellowship.