This article argues that the combination of dialogicity, monologicity and polyphony in Jelinek’s play Die Schutzbefohlenen [Charges] serves to present Austria and the EU’s so-called ‘refugee crisis’ as a crisis of hospitality. Specifically, it analyses moments in the play text where dialogue is attempted but fails or where voices talk past each other to suggest that the monologic aspects of the text highlight both the inhospitality experienced by many seeking refuge in Austria and the EU as well as the sense of crisis among host-society politicians and citizens, stemming from their perception that they can neither control the arrival of refugees nor the discourse surrounding them
