Peter Turrini ran away from the rural scene in which he was born but never escaped his roots. He ended up portraying the life of the Austrian countryside and working-class milieu in his plays, television plays, prose, and poetry, becoming one of the most important authors of the 1970s and 1980s to revitalize an old tradition of German and particularly of Austrian theater: the critical folk and village play. His plays depict oppressed proletarians, narrow-minded bourgeois, brutalized farmers, corrupt mayors, and ruthless land developers. What such characters have to tell, and the lives they live, are seldom edifying. Turrini's protagonists may be victims or villains, comical or tragic, or all of these at once; but they always convince their audiences to pay attention to what they have to say.

Turrini was born on 26 September 1944 in Sankt Margarethen, Austria, and grew up in Maria Saal. His mother came from...