»A masterful and authoritative chronicler.«

»The name Erich Hackl has become a trademark for wonderfully sensitive real-life stories unique in contemporary German literature.«

»Erich Hackl's concise and hauntingly dense works of prose have gained him a huge audience and great success. At the bottom of his efforts are usually some forgotten beings, victims of our century's cruel history, with their authentic albeit not exactly remembered biography. Here Hackl, the Austrian author, overly sensitized perhaps because of his own country's extreme insensitivities, steps in and tries to bring about an act of belated justice and redemption. This obviates the question whether Hackl is a fiction writer or a historian, a lawyer of the ›small people‹ or a missionary voice of human dignity: he is all of these, and ideally they all add up to make a writer.«

»Erich Hackl's narrative is masterful and compelling.«

»One of Austria’s virtuoso masters of language [. . .] who has done more to correct our image of history than a dozen historians put together.«