Bachmann, Ingeborg
Description
"These unfinished novels, Ingeborg Bachmann's only untranslated works of fiction, were intended to follow her widely acclaimed work Malina in a cycle
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to be entitled Todesarten, or Ways of Dying. Although Bachmann died before completing them, The Book of Franza and Requiem for Fanny Goldmann stand on their own, continuing Bachmann's tradition of using language to confront the disease plaguing human relationships." "Bachmann's perception of fascism as not being limited to the context of the war but also existing within the intimate relations of everyday life - between husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, psychiatrists and patients - is evident in The Book of Franza. A woman escapes from a sanitorium and, after years of silence, sends her brother a cryptic telegram. Rightly suspecting that she has fled her sadistic husband - a renowned Austrian psychiatrist whose intimate relations have merged with his studies of concentration camps - her brother finds her in their childhood home. They travel to Egypt, where Franza slowly begins to regain her bearings. But Franza's desire to cleanse herself by journeying into the heart of the desert's void ends in tragedy." "The heroine of Requiem for Fanny Goldmann makes no attempt to escape her history. Fanny, a Viennese actress, is manipulated by an ambitious playwright. Deception follows disloyalty, and the final treachery comes when the playwright portrays her in a novel, securing his fame but robbing Fanny of her future." --Book Jacket.
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