Angel Dust

On an island in the middle of the river, where no one ever goes, three abandoned boys - Petru, Magare and Cheta - live in primitive conditions. Every day they go out on a boat to "work" on the other shore, in the big city. They are small, inconspicuous and their job is to steal from people on the streets. They must then fill a chest with the loot, which a certain Krakadzil - a man who pays the children a few coins, brings them something to eat, and sends them a buddy with "angel dust" - a synthetic drug that is supposed to make them feel good and enjoy their work. The boys are afraid of Krakadzil, but they do not know any other way of life and are terrified by the idea that they will grow up and he will no longer need them.

 But everything changes when Petru meets a girl the same age and befriends her. Marja is attracted by his guilelessness and strange behaviour, while he gets to know the normal life of his peers. Situations arise that are new to both of them, and they don't know how to behave in them. Petru not only can't read, she doesn't know other common things in daily life, she doesn't know what family is. Gradually he changes and it becomes noticeable to the other boys, they feel that something unusual is happening. And that can be dangerous for them. But the course of events can no longer be stopped...

The literary work of Austrian author Cornelia Travnicek (b. 1987) includes novels, short stories, a children's book and poetry. Her debut novel Chucks (2012) was successfully adapted into a film under the title Mae (2015) - the film won the Audience Award at the Montreal Film Festival. An excerpt from her second novel Junge Hunde (Young Dogs), at that time still unfinished, won the Audience Prize in the 2012 Ingeborg Bachmann Competition in Klagenfurt. The novel Angel Dust was shortlisted for the Austrian Book Prize in 2020.

 The young writer, originally from Lower Austria, studied a remarkable combination of Sinology and Computer Science at the University of Vienna, and she is dedicated to both disciplines: is employed as a project manager and researcher at the Austrian Center for Virtual Reality and Visualization, while translating short literary prose from Chinese.