Reviewed by: Diskurse des Kalten Krieges: Eine andere österreichische Nachkriegsliteratur by Stefan Maurer, Doris Neumann-Reiser, Günther Stocker Joseph McVeigh Stefan Maurer, Doris Neumann-Reiser, and Günther Stocker, Diskurse des Kalten Krieges: Eine andere österreichische Nachkriegsliteratur. Literaturgeschichte in Studien und Quellen 29. Vienna: Böhlau, 2017. 737 pp. This study understands itself as a corrective to an Austrian cultural historiography that typically views Austrian literature after 1945 as having avoided a critical look at the immediate past (National Socialism and Austrofascism) and the political present (Cold War), especially in the first postwar decades. To counter this perception, the authors of this book present the results of a research project, conducted at the University of Vienna, that examined over two hundred novels, dramatic pieces, cabaret skits, and poems that refute the prevailing narrative of an apolitical literature in the postwar years. Although the works treated here were, with few exceptions, published, they generally enjoyed at best only a modest critical resonance at the time, not least because their authors, such as Leo Katz, Susanne Wantoch, Adolf Schütz, and Franz Kreuzer, among others, were largely unknown. However, the list of authors also includes many who were quite well known, at least in Vienna, such as Friedrich Heer, Johannes Mario Simmel, Helmut Qualtinger, Erika Mitterer, and Rudolf Henz. Organized into fifteen thematic areas, this study reads like a primer on the most salient aspects of the Cold War from an Austrian perspective, such as “Spionage,” “Materialismus versus Christentum,” “Totalitarianismus,” “Verschleppung und Menschenraub,” “Die Grenze,” and “Österreichische Gulag-Literatur.” Each section first sets an appropriate historical context of the respective discourse, drawing primarily on newspaper and periodical articles of the time to do so, and then examines their expression in the literary works discussed. In so doing, the authors go beyond simply recounting how [End Page 149] the works are informed by Cold War developments by pointing out the difficulties inherent in treating such topics at that time. One example is the literature surrounding the nascent nuclear age. Because of the propaganda campaigns by both the Soviets and the Americans, most authors found it difficult to discuss atomic weapons without being characterized as sympathetic to one side or the other. Similarly, those works dealing with the legacy of the National Socialist period in postwar Austria often saw continuities in the respective ideological camps of the Cold War and their supporters in Austria. The individual chapters provide very useful outlines of the political and cultural background of the various discourses, including many of the scandals and intrigues in Austria that relate to Cold War politics, from the polemics of Hans Weigel and Friedrich Torberg to the scandal surrounding the actor Karl Paryla at the Salzburger Festspiele, who was fired for supposed Communist sympathies, and that of the physicist Hans Thirring, whose pacifist position regarding nuclear weapons by 1950 had evolved to an advocacy of the policy of mutually assured destruction as the best way to prevent nuclear war. There are many such details in this book, and they provide a fascinating and informative background to the literary texts discussed. The final chapter of this study touches upon areas where scholars could build upon this compendium, for example, in examining the later years of the Cold War (1967–89) in the literature of the period. More importantly, the authors also raise the questions of why the works treated in this study were never incorporated into the literary canon of the first postwar decades and how the official canon was, in fact, created to exclude them. The answers might lie in public opinion surveys of readers’ tastes conducted by the Americans in Vienna in the late 1940s, which this study does not take into account. According to these surveys, the Viennese public in the early postwar period—the most important audience for the Austrian publishing industry—preferred established authors (read: those whose works were widely published in the 1930s and 1940s) as well as works of a lighter nature and generally shied away from younger authors, new types of literature, and overt discussions of politics, as further surveys of that time indicate. Similarly, this study does not evaluate the one medium where the largest...