Peter Henisch traces his mother’s life in new novel

In his new novel “Muttersuchen”, Austrian author Peter Henisch follows his mother Rosa’s life from her son’s childhood in Gmünd in the Waldviertel to the war and postwar years and her attempts to escape the constraints of her time, ORF reports.

When Henisch thinks of Gmünd, he remembers sunny days, his mother in a traditional dress and the songs she used to sing. He spent two years there as a young boy after mothers and children were evacuated from Vienna during the bombing.

Gmünd became a temporary home for him. Towards the end of the war, Rosa and her son had to flee again, travelling at night to her sister, who had also been evacuated with her son. In the novel, the place is called “Schratten”, although no real place exists under that name. Henisch renamed it for the story.

More than eight decades later, “Muttersuchen” returns to these memories. Starting with his own childhood, Henisch follows Rosa’s story through the 1980s, combining family history with Austria’s history during the period.

A story that stayed with him

This is not the first time Henisch has drawn on his family in his writing. His novel “Die kleine Figur meines Vaters” was published in 1975. More than 25 books followed, and family stories repeatedly found their way into his work. At some point, he says, it was time to dedicate a book to his mother.

Henisch’s relationship with Rosa was always intense. During the three years he spent writing “Muttersuchen”, he repeatedly felt that his mother was with him. “My view of my mother deepened,” he says. The work affected him deeply, both because of the story itself and because of what his mother experienced during her life.

A woman searching for her own path

In “Muttersuchen”, Rosa is more than the writer’s mother. Henisch portrays a woman living in a period when women faced severe social restrictions. As the wife of a well-known war photographer, she gained access to a world that remained hidden from most other women of her time.

At the same time, she tried to break free from her ambivalent relationship with her husband and from her dependence. “She wanted to emancipate herself,” Henisch says of his mother.

While writing, Henisch combines memories with imagination. Personal recollections and stories become a literary narrative that portrays both one woman’s life and a society in transition.

A writer returns to his family

Henisch was born in Vienna in 1943. He studied philosophy and psychology and co-founded the literary magazine “Wespennest” with Helmut Zenker in 1969. He has worked as a freelance writer since the 1970s and has received numerous awards, including the Austrian Art Prize for Literature.

“Prizes and awards mean a lot to me. It is very pleasing when the work you are engaged in is recognised,” Henisch says. With “Muttersuchen”, he returns to a subject that has accompanied him for decades: his own family. After giving his father a literary place, he now does the same for his mother. The search for Rosa also becomes a journey back to his own memories.