Author reading: Peter Waterhouse: Z Ypsilon X

The Austrian writer Peter Waterhouse reads from his monumental novel Z Ypsilon X (2025, Matthes & Seitz Berlin). Spanning over a thousand pages, the work combines narrative, essay, memory, and poetic reflection into a richly layered text that impressively intertwines historical reality, family history, and autofiction.

At its core is the search for his grandparents from Opava and the mysterious decision of his grandfather to join National Socialism in 1938. How could a reader of Kraus, Altenberg, Trakl, and Tolstoy become the chief editor of Austrian Nazi propaganda? After his death on the Eastern Front in 1944, his books disappeared from the family’s collective memory – the inheritance library becomes for Waterhouse the starting point for a multifaceted exploration stretching from the First World War to the present.

With extraordinary linguistic sensitivity and experimental openness, Waterhouse creates a literary landscape in which reading itself becomes a central event. Z Ypsilon X is simultaneously a family chronicle, an essay on literature, and a poetic plea for the power of careful observation and slow thinking.

Peter Waterhouse (born 1956, Berlin) grew up in Vienna and is considered one of the most significant voices in contemporary Austrian literature. He is the author of numerous poetry collections, essays, and prose works, and also works as a translator from English and Italian. His texts are distinguished by a particular attentiveness to language, perception, and the hidden connections between things and words.

Dr. Vincenza Scuderi provides the introduction to Peter Waterhouse’s work.

In German only.