Thomas Glavinic

Thomas Glavinic (born 2 April 1972 in Graz) is an Austrian writer. With Kathrin Röggla and Daniel Kehlmann, he is among other contemporary Austrian authors being perceived as significantly shaping the literary discussion in Austria.

Life The former writer of advertising copy and taxi driver emerged with his 1998 debut novel Carl Haffner's Love of the Draw. The novel describes the life of chess master Carl Schlechter. The book received several awards and has been translated into other languages, but did not make it onto the bestseller lists. The novel has autobiographical aspects: Thomas Glavinic played his first chess game at the age of five and in 1987 he achieved second place in the Austrian chess rankings for his age group.

The novel Herr Susi (Mr. Susi) followed in 2000. Written in hard prose, it is a statement against the football business, and received mainly negative reviews from the critics. In 2001, the criminal novel Der Kameramörder (The Camera Murderer) (awarded the Friedrich-Glauser-Prize at the Criminale) was published and was enthusiastically celebrated by the feuilletons due to its criticism of the media. In 2004, Glavinic succeeded in convincing both critics (no. 1 on the ORF critics best list) and readers (no. 1 on the Austrian bestseller list) with his satiric development-novel Wie man leben soll (How to Live), written from the perspective of the indefinite "one". In August 2006, the novel Die Arbeit der Nacht (Night Work) was released and scored no. 1 on the critic's list again in the same month. His novel, Das bin doch ich (That's Me), appeared in summer of 2007 and was nominated for the German Book Prize. It made it onto the short list, a selection of six of the twenty authors originally chosen.

Thomas Glavinic lives in Vienna.