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Book presentation of the translation and commentary by Nicola Cipani, NYU The translator and commentary author in conversation with Thomas Eder, University of Vienna Nicola Lucchi, CIMA - Center for Italian Modern Art Despite its undisputed place in the canon of the avant-garde, Oswald Wiener’s improvement of central europe (die verbesserung von mitteleuropa, roman) has long remained a riddle in need of interpretation. At the time of its publication in the ‘60s — among puzzled, even shocked, reactions — Wiener’s novel gained immediate recognition as epoch-defining work. Presented as a “novel”, the book is in fact a conglomerate of writings — from philosophical fragments to montage, from scientific metafiction to theatrical farce, from pseudo-diary to automatic invention — aimed at a radical critique of society. The author of this furious exercise was a young writer who called himself a “student of a new anarchy”, a former enfant terrible of the experimental poetry circle known as the “V
