ABSTRACT
Innerhofer’s work is autobiographical, based on his experience as the illegitimate son of an Austrian peasant woman mercilessly exploited between the ages of six and seventeen on his father’s farm, then employed as an industrial worker, until night school and university, by presenting new horizons, enabled him to escape his roots. The novels Schöne Tage (1974), Schattseite (1975) and Die groβen Wörter (1977), in which these three phases of the author’s life are described, form a unity. The barely disguised account of the author’s life continues in Der Emporkömmling (1982), while Um die Wette leben (1993) presents hectic Salzburg and relaxed Orvieto as contrasting settings for the efforts of the protagonist to find himself as a writer.
