This anthology presents an image of the Austrian people through short narrative prose works by forty of the leading modern and contemporary authors. The dimensions of being human, from the soaring heights to the abysmal depths, are most striking in the relationships of the individual to his or her surroundings. For this reason prose pieces were chosen that illustrate relationships, not only those between man and wife, man and woman, murderer and victim, father and daughter or mother and daughter, but also those between man and man, human being and God, man and city, as well as relationships between familiar and alien forms of life.