Customer Reviews

Malina: A Novel (Portico Paperbacks)

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Ingeborg Bachmann is a truly great and underappreciated writer, and this is her masterpiece. It is also the earliest novel I'm aware of on the subject of the lasting impact of child abuse in adult life, written at a time when the possibility of such an experience was almost unspeakable. Her approach is never polemical, but dreamy and suggestive, and the ending is one of the most devastating in literature. Check out her poetry, too.

As an Austrian I literally grew up with Ingeborg Bachmann. No matter if you read her short stories, poetry, or novel, every single line is deeply compelling and challenging. I have read "Malina" so many times, and this translation truly came up to my expectations as far as quality.

~Pat Paul Jammernegg, author of Prototype

Malina is a strange book that provoked my interest in what it means to love and live -- is the love-obsession justifiable? When there is noone else but a single person in your life, because you are just this way, does it mean that there are many people like this one but you have not found them yet. Because Bachmann's stream-of-consciousness style, the book is really difficult to follow, especially the part 'The third man' but once you have the patience to read and think continuously, to be shocked and still know who you are -- it gives an enormous pleasure to know a little more of the world that is inside!