Pavel Gheo Radu

Interactive reading of the latest novel "Good Night, Children!" in an experimental manner with multimedia support.

Also, this residential programme would offer me the necessary active respite I need to develop the draft of a major literary project - a novel placed in the Central European area. It would help me to get acquainted to the city of Vienna, which is supposed to be one of the settings for my novel.

During my residence in Vienna, I wrote some short stories; also, a number of essays about the cultural sightings and attractions, but also about the everyday life in the city. Some of the texts focused on the city of Vienna have already been published in Romania (such as Vienele mele – “My Viennas” – and Viena culinară – “Culinary Vienna”), as well as several short essays.
There are also a series of literary and pure documentary notes that I intend to keep for later use, in a future (and major) literary project: a Central-European novel on identity and alienation, localized in three different cities with some common historical background, i.e. contemporary Timişoara, Split and Vienna, with a perspective towards their past. Therefore, I focused on gathering specific information about the attitudes, mentalities and the general atmosphere of the city. For this purpose, I wandered daily over the city neighborhoods, from Florisdorf to Simmering or Hietzing and Meidling, searching for proper settings, either with a strongly mixed population, or with certain specificity. While doing this, I tried to get in touch with the normal life of the citizens, and to discover interesting or functional places for a fictional frame. I spent two days on a documentary search in Zentralfriedhof and in the surrounding area, also for historical and documentary purposes.
In October 23rd, I was invited to deliver a lecture at Institut für Romanistik, Universität Wien, and, subsequently, to initiate a discussion about the contemporary Romanian literature with the students, coordinated by the Romanian lecturer Florinel Oprescu. The discussion was both interesting and stimulating, and I was quite pleased by the students’ reaction.
In October 24th, I had a public reading with a video presentation in MuseumsQuartier, Raum D. Gabriel Kohn, Ph. D., deputy director at the Romanian Cultural Institute from Vienna, introduced me to the public, and the German actor Till Firit read a fragment in German from my latest novel, Noapte bună, copii! (“Good Night, Children!”). As the event was well organized by the MQ team, and the public seemed interested and attracted by the presentation and the reading, I considered the event a successful one.
I may also include here the visits I made to various museums, historical places and art galleries, as they completed my staying in the city and offered a more profound image of the contemporary Vienna.