Gerhard Roth (writer)

Gerhard Roth (born June 24, 1942 in Graz) is an Austrian writer.

The son of a medical practitioner, Roth, too, originally wanted to study medicine himself, but soon turned his attention to literature. Initially, he earned his living as a computer programmer.

He has been a freelance writer since 1976. From 1973 to 1978, he was member of the Grazer Autorenversammlung before he moved to Hamburg in 1979. Since 1986, he has divided his time between Vienna and in Styria.

He has won many literature prizes, among which are the literature prize of Styria (1976), the Alfred-Döblin-Prize (1983), and the Bruno-Kreisky-Prize (2002). In 1995, he was awarded the Golden Romy for his screenplay of Schnellschuss. He is also the recipient of the 2012 Jakob-Wassermann-Literaturpreis.

Roth refers to himself as "someone obsessed with writing in the best sense." In the focus is the hero, struggling in vain, to whom the world appears to be a torturous, intolerable state. Often Roth externally couches his writings in the form of a crime novel, in which he emphasises the unravelling of the hidden, in a figurative sense.

The focus of his main opus, Die Archive des Schweigens, is the re-appraisal of Austrian history in today's political and social systems.

All references are in German.

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