Isabel Fargo Cole’s other translations include The Sleep of the Righteous, by Wolfgang Hilbig (Two Lines Press); The Jew Car, by Franz Fühmann; Collected Essays, by Friedrich Dürrenmatt; and “I,” by Wolfgang Hilbig (all with Seagull Books). She also edits the online translation journal no man’s land.
In Among the Bieresch, the young narrator, Hans, is sent to his father’s ancestral village in the easternmost province of the “Empire” (a surreal postwar Austria). His uncle…