“An existential portrait, a work of desperate obsession, a proto-feminist classic, and one of the most jagged renderings of female consciousness European literature has produced.”

In its torrent of language, paralyzing lassitude, and relentless constriction of expectation and escape, Malina condenses―and then detonates―the neurasthenic legacy of the interwar Austrian novel.” “Although Bachmann imbibed the despondent charm of her forebears, her only finished novel reaches the contemporary reader as something strange and sui generis: an existential portrait, a work of desperate obsession, a proto-feminist classic, and one of the most jagged renderings of female consciousness European literature has produced. there is no certain narrative, but there are many, deeply internalised, stories.” “In the astonishing desolation and wonder that is Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina. “Bachmann’s vision is so original that the effect is like having a new letter of the alphabet.” John Williams, New York Times Book Review Though even innovative mainstream fiction now being published reads like “A Is for Apple” compared to Malina, there’s no question that the book shares a spirit with any and all books about the unsought psychological challenges of being a woman in this world. Lucid and powerful.” And it’s a love triangle, though a triangle most accurately drawn with dotted lines, given that it’s debatable how many of its members are real.This revised translation appears at a time when the book feels quite contemporary. “A psychological thriller of a tormented, existential sort.

“Enigmatic, yet piercing: equal to the best of Virginia Woolf and Samuel Beckett.” “In place of Wittgenstein’s language as city, Malina creates a vision of Vienna as language, one might even say as mind: to what extent it may be feminine, masculine, or otherwise is impossible to discern.” “It seems in Malina there is nothing Bachmann cannot do with words.”

Dense, compelling, often weirdly funny, a dark fairy tale told as a murder mystery. “Bachmann's only novel―set in Vienna and first published in 1971―takes on the vexed struggle between the sexes in a decaying city.

Malina book