A short life of the author
Aglaja Veteranyi (1962–2002) was born in Bucharest to a family of circus performers. She grew up traveling with her family through Europe and South America, eventually settling in Switzerland. She performed as an actress and wrote in German.
Life and Career
Why the Child Is Cooking in the Polenta (Warum das Kind in der Polenta kocht, 1999) — her debut and most important work — tells the story of a girl growing up in a Romanian circus family that wanders through Europe. The prose is fragmented, childlike, and formally daring: short paragraphs and sentences that mimic a child’s consciousness confronting fear, displacement, and the precariousness of life without a fixed home.
The novel was a critical success in the German-speaking world and has been translated into over twenty languages. The English translation by Vincent Kling (published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2012) introduced Veteranyi’s work to Anglophone readers.
Major Works and Themes
Veteranyi wrote about displacement, childhood, fear, and the fragility of belonging. Her prose — compressed, repetitive, incantatory — draws on oral performance traditions and has more in common with poetry than conventional fiction.
The Shelf of Last Breaths (Das Regal der letzten Atemzüge, 2002) — a posthumous collection — extends the themes and formal approach of her debut.
Key Works
- Why the Child Is Cooking in the Polenta (1999)
Collecting Veteranyi
German originals (Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt) bring $30–$80. The Dalkey Archive English translation brings $20–$40. Veteranyi’s small body of work and early death make her a cult figure in European literature.