The article is devoted to the problem of genre hybridization in the novel “Silence. One Killer Chronicle” by modern Austrian writer Thomas Raab. The composition and structure of the novel as a “text in motion”, as becoming of being has been analyzed. The problems of an individual in the context of authoritative power discourse, marginality, Michel Focalut’s nomadism have been elucidated. The final of the novel’s content has been revealed as apotheosis of pain for creativity, feelings sublimation, as birth of an artistic piece and, at the same time, “death of the author”, who exposes discourses, responsible for generating texts which are assigned to him.

The article describes the problems of architectonics as the main construction principle of Austerlitz, a novel by German author W. G. Sebald. The aim of this article is to analyze architectonics as a general system of connections between separate parts of the artistic whole, as well as an artistic discourse that organizes the interaction between the aesthetic subject, aesthetic object and aesthetic addressee through cohesion and coherence of elements of different levels of the text. The article describes the essence of the concept of time in the novel; each moment can be revisited both at the level of reminiscence and inner feeling. The concept of time is subordinate to the character’s pursuit – unraveling the mystery of his real ancestry and the way of exploring personal history in forgotten locations, cities and streets of lost time, in a phantom happy childhood. The article examines the formation of artistic space from the character’s past, his travels down the memory lane; from flashbacks, dialogues between Jacques Austerlitz and the nameless listener (narrator, in fact, the author of the work); from descriptions of architectural structures, penitentiaries, fortresses, castles; from black-and-white photographs of various objects, objects that give the text the authenticity of a chronicle. Austerlitz rejects the documentary – fiction dichotomy cannot be unambiguously defined either as fiction or as a historical work. The article argues that this is the literature of personal experience ‘from the other side’, when the theme of memory and destruction reveals itself not through established historical symbols, but through personal dialogue between man and the material world. The article argues that this is the literature of personal experience ‘from the other side’, when the theme of memory and destruction reveals itself not through established historical symbols, but through personal dialogue between man and the material world. The analysis concluded that the architectonics in Austerlitz functions as series of consecutive moral problems associated with individual guilt about historical events. It is a dense intertextual postmodern documentary-fiction novel in which the author's experience is combined with emotions, personal empathy, synesthesia, which separates him from the official interpretation of history, coverage of painful problems of the past (Holocaust), trauma and oblivion.

The article illustrates the relationship between politics and morality in the novel «The Capital» written by the famous Austrian writer Robert Menasse, a recipient of the German Book Prize in 2017. The research focuses on the study of the preliminaries for the 50th anniversary of the European Commission, one of the principal bureaucratic institutions of the European Union. The article highlights the anniversary celebration settings in the Department of Culture and Education. It considers different views on the event format in terms of the fundamental provisions of the European Commission with reference to historical memory and internal conflicts within the bureaucracy. The message of the primary slogan of the project “Concentration camps – never again!” is explained, integrating the past (remembrance of Auschwitz, the Holocaust) and the present (the real state of affairs in the European Union) along with a vision of the prospective political establishment of the shared European community. In this respect, some bullet points of the report made by the professor Alois Erhart from Vienna, a think tank member and the author’s alter ego, represent a common view of substantialization of the united Europe based on overcoming contradictions between the European Union policy and the national interests of the member countries. The research examines the peculiarities of the literary space in the «The Capital». It is determined that the complexity and diversity of the work produce a hybrid novel form, incorporating the features of the intellectual prose, essay, political pamphlet, and the thriller. An important aspect, highlighted in the article, involves the issue of fiction, fabrication, factuality in terms of the author-reader game accompanying the process of sense generation and text perception. The connotation of a grotesque image of a pig running through the center of Brussels is examined from different perspectives, both as an artistic device implicated in distinct plot lines, and as a metaphor attributed to the overall state of affairs in the capital of the united Europe.

The article is devoted to the coverage of the problem of bricolage as a method of memory reconstruction in the novel “Austerlitz” by the greatest German writer Winfried Sebald. The article notes that “Austerlitz” marks the transition from trauma to conscious identity as part of the historical memory of the Holocaust. It shows how the hero of the work, Jacques Austerlitz, acquires his identity by assembling from scattered information his personal history, reflecting a significant part of the collective tragedy. The genre feature of the work as a travelogue, memoir, investigation, as literature bordering on documentary and artistic experience, where the real is combined with the fictional, is highlighted. The article describes in detail the content of the technique of bricolage as a form of “wild”, “pre-rational” way of thinking, as a technique of fitting auxiliary materials (old photographs, newspaper clippings), a montage of disparate episodes, the technique of collage. The structure of the work’s storytelling is analyzed when the narrator does not tell the story but describes what he hears from Jacques Austerlitz. It is as if it is not a text, but the story itself, which someone tells, and also shows pictures for authenticity. The functions of the hero in the novel gradually shift from people to things, documents, bearers of the memory of individual and collective civilizational catastrophe. These indescribable witnesses break the blockade of traumatic silence around the childhood of Austerlitz, embodied in images of blindness, dumbness, oblivion. Before the protagonist of the work, the “man without a past,” the history of his family, the ghostly happy childhood that was rudely cut short by the separation from his biological parents, is suddenly revealed. Sebald demonstrates a contemporary form of novel narrative in which the truthfulness of the Holocaust narrative is revealed by incorporating the exile’s personal authorial biography, pain, and guilt into the memory of this tragedy. The role of photographs and descriptions of architectural structures in revealing the immanent semantic content of the subject, not manifested verbally, is analyzed. The latter is the key document that unites and structures the important for the writer themes of memories, memory, indifference, oblivion, return to the ghostly past, overcoming of the psychological trauma. Based on the analysis the author concludes that the attitude to the reader as a co-author brings Sebald’s novel closer to the tradition of the European intellectual novel and postmodern hypertexts, in which meaningful units are not presented in a traditional linear sequence, but as a multiplicity of links and transitions. The author notes that the acute experience of humanitarian catastrophe, the multilayered text, the density of meaningful meanings make this work a notable phenomenon in the context of artistic comprehension of traumatic memory.

The research deals with the issue of genre hybridization in the novel “Silence – Chronicle of a Killer” written by a contemporary Austrian writer Thomas Raab. An examination of the novel's composition and structure, as a text in motion, has been accomplished in the article. The novel “Silence” is an excellent illustration of how the genre of adventure has been adapted to include elements of science fiction. This novel is a love tale, a rural life saga, a formation narrative, and a psychological thriller all in one. As a fictionalized account of the life of a serial murderer with hypersensitive hearing who became a legend for his mental torment and suffering, it serves both as a biography and a thriller. Novelist Raab uses elements from classic horror novels like Frankenstein, German romantics, in particular, G. Kleist, the tale of Casper Hauser, and detective novels like Friedrich Durrenmatt's "Promise" to tell the story of Casper Hauser's disappearance in his book. A new aesthetic experience may be formed at various degrees of identification ranging from naive perception to higher levels of literary reception. Concentration is required for poetic and philosophical substance. Michel Focalut's nomadism, marginality, and authoritarian power rhetoric have been discussed in this article. The novel's ultimate content has been disclosed as the aphesis torment, emotional sublimation, as the birth of an artwork and, at the same time, death of the author, who exposes discourses, accountable for creating texts that are allocated to him.