Overqualified – Lab Bench to Street Side

Post-academic, contemporary satire set in Vienna, Austria

You have a PhD, a brilliant publication record, and an international research background. So why are you being chased by a terrier in a Viennese stairwell?

When the Austrian scientist Dr. Maximilian Bauer loses his research funding, he is forced to leave Canada and his fiancée behind. Seeking employment in his hometown Vienna, he is dismissed by algorithms and an AI interviewer as an overqualified, socially inept nerd. Searching for a way to beat the stereotype, a conversation with his hustling flatmate leads to a radical decision: to become a face-to-face street fundraiser for an NGO. Trading his lab coat for a fundraiser’s vest, Max begins patrolling public spaces, determined to prove he is more than the data harvested from his CV.

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Book Details – What can you expect?

Genre: Contemporary Satire / Modern Bildungsroman / Social-Critique / Autofiction

Perspective: Close Third-Person Narrator

Style: Deadpan, minimalist realism (written by a human who aims for accessibility)

Length: approximately 47,000 words

Cover Design: by Florian Puhm, AI-assisted generation using ChatGPT (OpenAI / DALL-E 3), compiled and typeset by the author. (because the human can write, but definitely cannot draw)

Curious about what I did before writing fiction? Check out my Science page!