Imma von Bodmershof (August 10, 1895 - August 26, 1982) was an Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n poetess born in Graz

Graz

The more recent population figures do not give the whole picture as only people with principal residence status are counted and people with secondary residence status are not. Most of the people with secondary residence status in Graz are students...

. She received the Grand Austrian State Prize

Grand Austrian State Prize

The Grand Austrian State Prize is a decoration given annually by Austria to an artist for exceptional work. The recipient must be an Austrian citizen with a permanent residence in Austria....

 in 1958 for her work Sieben Handvoll Salz (Seven Handfuls of Sand), a novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 set in Sicily

Sicily

Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

. She was notorious in her contribution to Islamic literature

Islamic literature

Islamic literature is literature written with an Islamic perspective, in any language.The most well known fiction from the Islamic world was The Book of One Thousand and One Nights , which was a compilation of many earlier folk tales told by the Persian Queen Scheherazade...

. She was influenced by the works of Norbert von Hellingrath

Norbert von Hellingrath

Norbert von Hellingrath was a German literary scholar whose main contribution to literary scholarship is the first complete edition of the works of the poet Friedrich Hölderlin. Hellingrath was born in Munich: his father was an army officer and his mother claimed descent from the Byzantine Emperor...

. She also was interested in Haiku

Haiku

' , plural haiku, is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterised by three qualities:* The essence of haiku is "cutting"...

 writing.

Imma was the daughter of Baron Christian von Ehrenfels

Christian von Ehrenfels

Christian von Ehrenfels was an Austrian philosopher, and is known as one of the founders and precursors of Gestalt psychology.- Life :...

, the founder of the modern structural Gestalt psychology

Gestalt psychology

Gestalt psychology or gestaltism is a theory of mind and brain of the Berlin School; the operational principle of gestalt psychology is that the brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies...

 in Austria. She was also the sister of Umar Rolf Baron Ehrenfels, an orientalist

Oriental studies

Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...

 and anthropologist who converted to Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

.

Works

• Der zweite Sommer (1937)
• Die Stadt in Flandern (1939)
• Begegnung im Frühling (1942)
• Die Jahreszeiten (1943)
• Die Rosse des Urban Roithner (1944)
• Das verlorene Meer (1952)
• Solange es Tag ist (1953)
• Sieben Handvoll Salz (1958)
• Unter acht Winden - (Under Eight Winds in English) (1962)
• Haiku (1962)
• Sonnenuhr (1973)
• Im fremden Garten. 99 Haiku (1980)
• Ibarras Bartabnahme (1982)