Professors of social science and history will find that Three Tearless Histories, by award-winning Austrian author Erich Hackl, is a good introduction into studying mid-century fascism and can easily be adopted into curricula on this topic. Students taking courses in these fields will appreciate Hackl’s unique style of uncovering history through three evocative personal stories about second and third generation descendants of war refugees who relocate to other countries under dictatorships, a Polish political prisoner who photographed Auschwitz prisoners and saved evidence of Mengele’s crimes, and the story of Austrian resistance fighter Gisela Tschofenig.

The Journal of Austrian Studies recently praised Hackl’s style:

Already in his translation of Hackl’s title—Drei tränenlose Geschichten—[translator] Mike Mitchell recognizes the Austrian writer as more of a “literary documentarian” than an inventor of fictional stories [Geschichten]. The three narratives are not in the usual sense “stories,” in which fictional characters and families are bound together by an act of authorial invention, but complex narratives whose twists, turns and connections are brought to the light of day by a writer engaged in search and discovery. […] Hackl add[s] a humanizing dimension to the family “story.” 

Three Tearless Histories will be released in paperback next week.