Review – New Book from Bad Voslau: “The Curious Traveler”

When someone goes on a trip, he can say something. This is an old saying we all know. And: Frankly speaking: Isn’t all life a journey? It is no wonder that the concept of the so-called “hero’s journey” has become entrenched in recent decades.

This is not a genre, but rather a process through which stories can be designed. The idea of ​​the hero’s journey was primarily explored by American mythologist Joseph Campbell, who lived from 1904 to 1987. He found that all well-known fairy tales and legends around the world are based on a simple basic pattern: the protagonist’s actions occur on a hero’s journey, or hero’s journey; Sometimes referred to in English as “the search”, it is characterized by a typical sequence of situations and characters that we meet again in all cultures.

The person who addresses this fact in his new book, recently published by Berger Verlag, is Wolfram Huber from Bad Voslau. In “The Strange Traveler,” the comprehensive artist, who was born in 1948 and initially trained in piano, violin, and singing, deals with the life of a band leader who has unusual things happen to him. The connection between travel and a fairy tale, as the term suggests, is represented by a story that tells the relationship between a train conductor and an old man.

The fact that the author has a lot of life experience is clearly noticeable in the text: his CV includes studies in theater studies, law, and even a doctorate. But that’s not all: participation in performances at the Vienna State Opera, the Volksoper, the Salzburg Festival and the Der Josefstadt Theater also adorn the biography of this extremely talented man, as well as journalistic work for numerous magazines. He was also a freelancer at ORF until 1982 – and at Radio Klassik Stephansdom he has designed a total of 25 series since 2017.

His novel proves that this wealth of training and activities not only protected him from becoming arrogant, but also kept the author “humble”: the protagonist is a conductor, a simple scholar, and our admiration for him immediately grows. Wolfram Hopper also retained a healthy skepticism toward the modern world, devoted to science and technology.