[1] She was the daughter of a doctor, while her great grandmother was Carola Seligmann, an opera singer who died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
Schwaiger attended grammar school at Freistadt until 1967 and then studied two semesters of Psychology, Germanic and Romance linguistics in Vienna.
(Why Is There Salt in the Sea?, 1977) became a sensational bestseller which sold several hundred thousand copies throughout German-speaking Europe.
The heavily autobiographical first-person story tells of the monotony of everyday married life and of unsuccessful attempts to flee this world.
Although her later works did not achieve the success of her first novel, Fallen lassen, a report of her experience in psychiatry, was met with critical acclaim.