©HpSchaefer Hans Peter Schaefer http://www.reserv-a-rt.de, CC BY-SA 3.0, Gerhard Roth, born in 1942 in Graz, is a prolific and highly regarded Austrian photographer and author.
Born in 1942 in Graz, Austria, he was one of three sons of a physician and his wife. He attended medical school without finishing and worked as a computer programmer and statistician before committing himself to the role of freelance writer in 1976.
His writings confront such provocative issues as criminality and violence, societal marginalization, the enduring influence of Nazi ideology, and connections between ‘madness’ and artistic creativity. After a period of experimental writing, he concentrated on long novels featuring such issues in contexts of cultural exploration, engaging mystery stories, and psychological portrayals of traveling Austrian protagonists.
His major books are two interrelated cycles of novels, Archives of Silence (1992) and Orkus (2009). The centerpiece of the first cycle is a complex montage novel, Landläufiger Tod (Ordinary Death) which contains his collection of aphorisms/anti-aphorisms. (2010)
Roth’s numerous honours include the Austrian State Prize in 2016; and his speeches and writings on current issues made him well known as a public intellectual. He spent most of his life in rural and urban Austria, including his home city of Graz, where he died in 2022. (2022)