Fritzl's Crimes Rooted in Literary History

Josef Fritzl's crimes stunned the world, but such demented patriarchs have long haunted Austrian literature. The dark 1852 story "Turmalin" depicts a deranged husband locking up his daughter; the 1917 novel The Grave of the Living tells of a troubled family and an imprisoned child. "This is the cultural matrix from which Josef Fritzl emerged," writes Ritchie Robertson in the Times Literary Supplement. (More Josef Fritzl stories.)