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Would you like to explore literature from around the world? This bookclub will select and discuss titles that have been translated from a variety of languages into English. After each meeting, we will collectively decide on the next book. This February, we will be reading Ingeborg Bachmann's Malina: In Malina, originally published in German in 1971, Ingeborg Bachmann invites the reader into a world stretched to the very limits of language. An unnamed narrator, a writer in Vienna, is torn between two men: viewed through the tilting prism of obsession, she travels further into her own madness, anxiety, and genius. Malina explores love, “deathstyles,” the roots of fascism, and passion.
“Fascism is the first thing in the relationship between a man and a woman, and I attempted to say that here in this society there is always war. There isn’t war and peace, there’s only war."—Ingeborg Bachmann
"A psychological thriller of a tormented, existential sort. 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. 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." —John Williams, The New York Times Book Review
"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. 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." —Dustin Illingworth, The Nation
Please join us in store on February 27th, where we will host a meeting for open discourse about translation and world literature! Copies of the book will be available in early January, so feel free to reserve one in the meantime. This event is open to all; masks are optional (they will be provided for free at the door).
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
1841-A rue Sainte. Catherine Ouest, Montreal, QC, Canada, Quebec H3H 1M2
