Author · Interculturalist

Exploring East to West,
without & within.

What do we want to leave behind?
Sovereignty is about legacy, authoritarianism, and intergenerational learning.
Part One of The Generations Trilogy.

Pamir Highway, Tajikistan — October 2018

Two evenings with Schattengeneration 1955

Saturday
24 October 2026 · 20:00
Öffentliche Bücherei St. Stefan im Rosental
Feldbacherstraße 24, 8083 St. Stefan im Rosental
Lesung: Schattengeneration 1955
Eintritt frei · rund um den Nationalfeiertag
Bücherei St. Stefan →
Thursday
19 November 2026 · 19:00
Weingut Posch — „Wein gut zum Lesen"
Romatschachen 64, 8212 Pischelsdorf
Lesung: Schattengeneration 1955
Eintritt frei · Reservierung: +43 3113 2086
Weingut Posch →

Books

Sovereignty — Overcoming Authoritarianism: A Family Perspective (cover)
2024 · English · Part One

Sovereignty

Overcoming Authoritarianism — A Family Perspective

After three decades of high-intensity work in conflict and transition countries, Chudoba stepped back to spend his mother's final months with her and to trace intergenerational learning across his family. Coming of age as the Iron Curtain fell, he tells the story of his parents growing up in the aftermath of the Second World War — and invites readers to find the transitional character in themselves, and to free the next generation from the patterns we inherit.

"A charming generational family memoir, laced with history and intimate portraits … J. Chudoba writes gracefully and with perceptive irony about his family's journey, seeking personal sovereignty."— Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize winner, American Prometheus
Ebook, hardcover, paperback Audiobook Trailer
Schattengeneration 1955 — Juliane und das Erbe der Freiheit (Cover, Uni-Press Graz)
2025 · Deutsch · Erzählendes Sachbuch

Schattengeneration 1955

Juliane und das Erbe der Freiheit

Ein Weckruf — an uns, unsere Kinder und nachfolgende Generationen. Das Buch erzählt von den Narben einer Generation, die nach 1945 zwischen Schweigen, Schuld und Aufbruch stand, und verknüpft das Porträt von Chudobas Mutter, die sich aus den Fallstricken schwarzer Pädagogik befreit, mit dem Weltgeschehen und dem gesellschaftlichen Wandel. Unsere Herkunft prägt uns — ob wir uns dazu bekennen oder nicht.

Uni-Press Graz, Oktober 2025 · Broschur (ISBN 978-3-903484-39-9) und Hardcover-Ausgabe (ISBN 978-3-903484-40-5) · auch als E-Book

Beim Verlag bestellen Leseprobe (PDF) Lesungen im Herbst 2026

Dumb Idea 2026

6,000 km from Central Asia to Central Europe, on two and a half BMWs. A photographic account of the overland ride home — thirty-four pages of road, mountains, and the long way between two continents.

View the photobook Read the essay: How to read a country in traffic

Lifelong learner, explorer, writer

Johannes Chudoba

Foto: Toni Muhr

Johannes Chudoba writes about sovereignty, political transition, and the long afterlife of twentieth-century history in Europe.

He grew up in the Turkey of the 1970s and the Austria of the last Cold War years, returning to his home town of Graz in 1982. He studied Russian before the Iron Curtain fell; the war in Yugoslavia drew him into post-conflict work, first in Croatia with the Austrian Peace Services, then in Bosnia-Herzegovina with the UN.

After two years as a Fulbright scholar at Princeton, he joined the UN: research for UNHCR on protracted refugee situations, work for the Commission on Human Security on statelessness, and the pioneering UN Coordination Unit in Tajikistan. Assignments in Nepal, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan followed, then a decade in Kyrgyzstan.

Back in Austria since 2022, he founded an IT company and turned much of his time to the stories of his own life and his ancestors'. His publications on academia.edu have been read in 140 countries. Sovereignty was launched at the Oesterreichische Nationalbank in Vienna in December 2024. He lives with his family between Vienna and Styria.

Events, interviews, press

For events, interviews or questions about the books: johannes.chudoba@gmail.com