The Book of Franza & Requiem for Fanny Goldmann

by Ingeborg Bachmann, Peter Filkins (Translator)

These unfinished novels were intended to follow her widely acclaimed Malina in a Proustian cycle to be entitled Todesarten, or Ways of Dying. Through the tales of two women in postwar Austria, Bachmann explores the ways of dying inflicted on women by men, and upon the living by history, politics, religion, family, and the self.

Genres: Fiction, German Literature, Classics, Germany, Literary Fiction

233 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

“What actually is possible, however, is transformation. And the transformative effect that emanates from new works leads us to new perception, to a new feeling, new consciousness.” This sentence from Ingeborg Bachmann’s Frankfurt Lectures on Poetics (1959-60) can also be applied to her own self-consciousness as an author, and to the history of her reception. Whether in the form of lyric poetry, short prose, radio plays, libretti, lectures and essays or longer fiction, Bachmann’s œuvre had as its goal and effect “to draw people into the experiences of the writers,” into “new experiences of suffering.” (GuI 139-140). But it was especially her penetrating and artistically original representation of female subjectivity within male-dominated society that unleashed a new wave in the reception of her works.

Although Bachmann’s spectacular early fame derived from her lyric poetry (she received the prestigious Prize of the Gruppe 47 in 1954), she turned more and more towards prose during the 1950’s, having experienced severe doubts about the validity of poetic language. The stories in the collection Das dreißigste Jahr (The Thirtieth Year; 1961) typically present a sudden insight into the inadequacy of the world and its “orders” (e.g. of language, law, politics, or gender roles) and reveal a utopian longing for and effort to imagine a new and truer order. The two stories told from an explicitly female perspective, “Ein Schritt nach Gomorrha” (“A Step towards Gomorrah”) and “Undine geht” (“Undine Goes/Leaves”), are among the earliest feminist texts in postwar German-language literature. Undine accuses male humanity of having ruined not only her life as a woman but the world in general: “You monsters named Hans!” In her later prose (Malina 1971; Simultan 1972; and the posthumously published Der Fall Franza und Requiem für Fanny Goldmann) Bachmann was again ahead of her time, often employing experimental forms to portray women as they are damaged or even destroyed by patriarchal society, in this case modern Vienna. Here one sees how intertwined Bachmann’s preoccupation with female identity and patriarchy is with her diagnosis of the sickness of our age: “I’ve reflected about this question already: where does fascism begin? It doesn’t begin with the first bombs that were dropped…. It begins in relationships between people. Fascism lies at the root of the relationship between a man and a woman….”(GuI 144)

As the daughter of a teacher and a mother who hadn’t been allowed to go to university, Bachmann enjoyed the support and encouragement of both parents; after the war she studied philosophy, German literature and psychology in Innsbruck, Graz and Vienna. She wrote her doctoral dissertation (1950) on the critical reception of Heidegger, whose ideas she condemned as “a seduction … to German irrationality of thought” (GuI 137). From 1957 to 1963, the time of her troubled relationship with Swiss author Max Frisch, Bachmann alternated between Zurich and Rome. She rejected marriage as “an impossible institution. Impossible for a woman who works and thinks and wants something herself” (GuI 144).

From the end of 1965 on Bachmann resided in Rome. Despite her precarious health—she was addicted to pills for years following a faulty medical procedure—she traveled to Poland in 1973. She was just planning a move to Vienna when she died of complications following an accidental fire.

Joey Horsley

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are things in the world that just suck and there is nothing you can do about them. I'm not talking about 'important' things like awful governments and assholes ruining the world or any of that kind of stuff, but rather things that should exist but never will. For example some of mine are that there will never be a completed third novel by David Foster Wallace (although I can keep my fingers crossed that someday the full version of Infinite Jest will be published, but I won't be holding my breath for it), or that Leonard Cohen and Nico never recorded an album together, or my newest one that Ingeborg Bachmann never finished writing the five novels that were to make up her Death series.

In this book are two of the novels that would have been part of her series of novels that would have been some seriously great shit if they had ever been written. From what I know about her these are about the only fragments of the Death novels that were actually written, or at least written enough to be publishable, or maybe it's just in translation, but I do know she never finished them. I don't think either of these two novella length pieces are probably finished either, they stand up fine on their own but they still seem like they only the beginnings of what she is trying to achieve.

The stories that make up these two novella length things are about ways of dying. Not the usual ways that people die though, or more specifically that one person kills another another, but in the subtle ways that people kill one another in their interactions with one another. The unfolding of the deaths in these two pieces comes across as almost more horrific than if someone had just walked up to someone and shot them in the head, and nothing so awful happens like this to the main characters here (well maybe not) but it's the little stupid everyday things that people do to one another that is put under a harsh light to show the effects they have on others. It's almost like she has taken the catch phrase "Banality of Evil" and given it a new treatment and yelled j'accuse! at everyone.

These two stories are also wonderfully interconnected, with cross references to each other, and a mixing of what is the 'fact' in the stories and fictions within fictions, and according to the notes in the book there are also interconnections made between what would have been the other books she had planned. I'm kind of a sucker for these kinds of loose connections between novels, so it's just another reason why I feel like the world would be a little bit better off if she had been able to finish writing her books, or at least learned the important lesson of don't fall asleep with a lit cigarette.

[Jim Elkins]

Why Mental States Might Not Need Explanations
-

Ingeborg Bachmann's unfinished set of four novels Todesarten ("Arts of Death," or "Arts of Dying") has been seen as a crucial document in postwar feminism. There is no reason to contest that, but especially in light of Malina, the only one of the set that Bachmann finished (these two are incomplete, and the fourth is just scattered notes, available in the German edition), the identification of her work with feminism is only partly right and often misleading. In Malina there's a desperate struggle, on the part of the narrator and the author, to remain stable long enough to complete the book. (Please have a look at that argument here.)

If these two unfinished novels, written in 1965-66, before Malina, seem less troubled, it may be because they feel more attentive to, or obligated to, normative narrative forms. Even so, there are disturbing eruptions of severe dissociative thinking, especially in The Book of Franza. The translator, Peter Filkins, talks about Franza's "inability to mourn" for her own destroyed life, and even though that is a Freudian conception, it feels more contemporary than this novel, where psychoanalysis is no solace or explanation—in fact Franza has been destroyed by the psychoanalyst to whom she is married. She suffers sudden bursts—hernias, really, open wounds—of trauma. Her brother hopes that by taking her along to Egypt he can at least distract her from her suffering, but her mind has been mortally wounded by her husband. Her brother is helpless:

"She had not arrived at Luxor but instead at a point in her illness, not having traveled through the desert but through her illness. In the evening she collapsed. I have seen how I will die, she said." (p. 105)

Franza collapses, trembles, is physically sick, spends hours just sitting. It is clear from early on that she will not live, will fail to cure herself.

The Book of Franza, Requiem for Fanny Goldmann, and Malina are about women who are nominally alive but actually broken, incapable of reaching old age. Bachmann provides reasons—not justifications or explanations—for the ways the men effectively murder their wives. Franza's husband is an internationally famous analyst in Vienna, and he married her in order to make her into an experiment. She discovers papers in which he records how he is systematically destroying her. Fanny's second husband uses his relationship with her to advance his career, effectively stealing her soul by transplanting it into his own novel. Both women die later, when the men they love are no longer present. (Although "love" sounds wrong here: Franza and Fanny pathologically and misguidedly depend on men, and experience that as love.)

I'd rather Bachmann hadn't added the plot points about the mens' motivations (the psychoanalyst apparently advances his theories, and the novelist thinks he can save his career) because cruelty is endemic in life and in her work, and the sinister plots and revelatory documents seem at once contrived, ineffective as explanations, and false flags presenting universal sadism and violence as career choices.

It's harder to object to Bachmann's wider theme that Austrian minds were contorted into cruelty by guilt and anger over the war, and that Franza's destruction cannot be thought about apart from the damage caused by the war. There are references in The Book of Franza to the Nuremberg trials and to SS doctors who experimented on prisoners. But in the end, I don't think those are necessary either. Franza's death in a distant country, fifteen years after she married the analyst, is not so much explained by the violence of the Second World War as it is a picture of the kind of diseased lives that could just as much lead to another war. There might be a lesson here for some writers: the story of the violence that leads Franza and Fanny to destroy themselves is not ultimately a contribution to feminism or the history of postwar Austria, and the books might have been even stronger if those few signposts had been pulled up.

[Cariba · Rating 5 out of 5]

(ich habe nur das Buch Franza gelesen)
Ich bin traurig, dass Frau Bachmann das Buch nicht zu Ende geschrieben hat. Auf der anderen Seite bin ich froh, die verschiedenen Entwicklungsstufen der Geschichte lesen zu dürfen und ich habe (wenn ich das überhaupt sagen kann) die Geschichte auch erst verstehen können, als ich alle Notizen, die das Buch hergibt, gelesen habe. Man kann sich wirklich sehr gut in Franza und ihr Unverständnis dafür, was ihr passiert ist und weshalb es gerade ihr passieren musste, hineinversetzen und die Konsequenzen, die sie für sich zieht nachvollziehen. Ich liebe an Ingeborg Bachmann (zwar kann ich das nicht sicher sagen aber ich will davon ausgehen) dass sie Schilderungen von Gefühlen nie abmildert, sondern so extrem beschreibt, wie sie in der Realität nun einmal sind und ich liebe, dass es keine Happy End gibt wo kein Happy End denkbar ist.
(.. heißt ja nicht umsonst Todesarten-Projekt)

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn't really a review (so don't "like" it, folks), just wanted to write a few notes before I forget... although these are short unfinished novels, they felt almost finished to me, in that the entire arc is included. There are some missing pieces in the middle, but you can pretty much guess it, especially if you read these two along with Malina, which forms a trilogy both in content and in theme. I feel like these two are not as deeply complicated as Malina, while still retaining the amazing writing I found in that one. The idea of erasure, of death by other means, is really quite interesting, and I wish Bachmann had written more novels.

I read this book while not really feeling in the mood for reading... I've been a little burnt out on reading lately. So I read The Book of Franza pretty quickly, but then took almost a month to read Requiem for Fanny Goldmann. It would probably have been more enjoyable if I had read it quicker.

[Nele · Rating 4 out of 5]

„Sie war auf ein paar Grundtöne reduziert. Glück, glücklich sein mit Jordan, Unglück, Tragödie mit Jordan, und sie erfuhr das übergangslos, als es passierte. Nur dass es passierte, und das war allerdings ein schreckliches Wort, Passieren, ihr musste das passieren, ihr musste so ein Mensch passieren, so ein Leben“

[είναι η θεία Κούλα · Rating 5 out of 5]

Εμένα μου άρεσε.

[Carloesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frammenti di un romanzo mai terminato che doveva fare parte di una trilogia mai completata: “Cause di morte”.
Una sorta di indagine sulle donne uccise se non nel corpo certamente nello spirito, vittime di moderni e sofisticati Barbablù che si aggirano tra corridoi e meandri del castello di un reale, normale, sadico (ma apparentemente distinto) assassino.
Che scoprono la porta nascosta (quella destinata a celare il proprio cadavere) quando ormai è troppo tardi. La porta in fondo si rivela essere uno specchio che riflette la nuova vittima femminile predestinata.

Questa edizione re-intitolata “Libro Franza” raccoglie per la prima volta non solo il materiale servito a suo tempo per l’edizione del romanzo incompiuto già apparso postumo come “Il Caso Franza”, ma anche materiale abbozzato precedentemente, varianti e alternative già scartate di medesimi brani, presentazioni pubbliche con lettura di brani provvisori del libro mentre era ancora un “work in progress”, altri brani da completare o assemblare per una versione definitiva che mai vide la luce.

Anche qui un romanzo tripartito (come in “Malina”). Temporalmente (ma non nella struttura del libro, che non segue il processo temporale) i fatti narrati si susseguono in tre distinte fasi: 1) L’”Epoca Jordan”, quella in cui il matrimonio tra Franziska (Franza) e il brillante psichiatra Leo Jordan (la stessa coppia già incontrata in “Il Latrato”, il più bel racconto della raccolta “Tre sentieri per il Lago”) si svela essere sotto le apparenze di un sano e invidiabile menage dell’alta (e colta) borghesia viennese l’ennesima e sadica ripetizione del mito di barbablù (ma la piena consapevolezza sarà raggiunta solo quando la “ricostruzione” dei fatti verrà narrata al fratello nel corso del viaggio in Africa) .
2) Il “Ritorno a Galicien” (l’unico capitolo che si possa considerare probabilmente completo e “definitivo” dell’intero libro, e capitolo iniziale dell’edizione intitolata “Caso Franza”) dove si narra del re-incontro tra una Franziska ormai malata, in fuga dal marito e dal suo “castello”, ed il fratello Martin, che verrà da lei costretto a portarla con sé in un viaggio di lavoro in Egitto (Martin è un geologo, probabilmente spedito sul Nilo “per errore”).
3) le pagine sparse di questo viaggio fino ai confini col Sudan all’epoca della inaugurazione della diga di Assuan (nucleo originario del romanzo, risalente ad un reale viaggio della Bachmann in quei luoghi, e che in un primo tempo doveva intitolarsi “Il libro del deserto”, poi divenute il capitolo conclusivo “La tenebra Egizia” nei progetti successivi che rivedono, oltre a queste stesse pagine, l’intera struttura dell’opera continuamente ripensata per circa un decennio) nel quale Franza troverà infine la morte.
Ed è in questa sezione (all’inizio di questa edizione nei frammenti provenienti dal “Libro del deserto”, ed alla fine per quelli risalenti al suo ripensamento come “Tenebra Egizia”), dove viene posto in vivo contrasto il mondo convenzionale dell’alta borghesia viennese e l’Africa, il mondo ancestrale nel quale Franza (nel suo non riuscire più a riconoscersi nell’uomo bianco sfruttatore, anche nel semplice turista che con superficialità vìola continuamente la sacralità di quei luoghi, e verso il quale Franza trova infine profondo orrore) si cala al culmine della malattia e della sofferenza apportatrice di verità, che si trovano le pagine più belle del libro, quelle che mostrano a quale altezza, a quale livello immenso di scrittura fosse giunta Ingeborg Bachmann.

Perduta troppo presto in uno stupido rogo casalingo romano. Prima di terminare questo capolavoro. Prima di davi un corpo e una struttura definitiva. E forse di scriverne altri.
Uccisa dall’uomo bianco forse già prima che dal fuoco del suo materasso.

[EmBe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seminar-Lektüre: Anspruchsvoll, unbequem und doch auch irgendwie bewegend. Franza geht sich und den Leserinnen verloren, auch weil der Roman nicht abgeschlossen ist. Franzas Leiden rührt von männlicher Dominanz über ihre Identität her. Erinnerlich ist mir ihr Schicksal im Schatten der Cheops-Pyramide, dann verdunkelt sich ihr Leben ganz.

[Dazessin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Der Fragment gebliebene Fall Franza gehört ebenso wie Malina zu Ingeborg Bachmanns Todesartenprojekt und in diesem Fall erzählt sie Geschichten von Verbrechen, die Mord sind im Inneren und Äußeren und schließlich an der Psyche hin zum Körper. Franza wird zum Fall gemacht von ihrem Ehemann und zerfällt an der Psychopathologisierung. Durch eine Abtreibung traumatisiert flüchtet sie, lässt sich von ihrem Bruder finden und reist mit ihm in die Wüste, wo sie sich immer mehr verliert in ihrer Angst und ihrem Schmerz(Menschheitsschmerz, Menschseinsschmerz).

Die erzählten Verbrechen sind so vielschichtig (immer wieder vorkommende die geologischen Metaphern), dass ich sie nicht alle ausführen kann, aber es handelt sich immer um Über_mächtiges, das mordet und zur Schau stellt. So wie Franza sich von dem Fossil, ihrem Ehemann, entblößt sieht, zur Schau gestellt, werden auch die Sarkophage aus den Pyramiden in Museen ausgestellt,um von Tourist_innen begafft werden zu können. Die Todesruhe wird gestört und verstört Franza ebenso wie das Beherrschen der Weissen über die Schwarzen.

Franza befindet sich also auf ihrer Wüstenreisen und verliert sich mal schleichend mal polternd, immer wieder und immer mehr und kapituliert irgendwann vor den Worten, dem Schmerz und dem Versteinern des Körpers (überhaupt gefährdete fragile Körperlichkeit und Gewalt gegen Weiblichkeit)

"Schmerz, seltsames Wort, seltsames Ding, in der Naturgeschichte des Menschen dem Körper zugedacht, aus dem Körper abgewandert und brisanter gemacht in seinem Gehirn. Ich bin in der Wüste, um meinen Schmerz zu verlieren, und verlier ich ihn nicht, der durch meinen Kopf, durch meine Atemorgane, durch die Herzcoronarien wütet und bis in die verdrehten Extremitäten, dieser wahnsinnige Schmerz, der sich alle paar Stunden ein anderes Feld aussucht, um mich auszuprobieren, meinen Kiefer, um ihn zu sperren, meine Zähne, um sie klappern zu lassen, meine Hände, damit sie taub werden, fremd an mir weghängen und mir die Schale aus der Hand gleitet, und wenn ich den nicht mehr verliere, nicht in diesen Knien, die einsacken, diesen Augen, in denen nach dem vorübergehenden Tod die Pupillen schaukeln und schiefstehen. Und wenn ich den Schmerz nicht mehr verliere..." (S.112)

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've just read the first part of the book, "The Book of Franza", as it is incorporating the tale of Bluebeard into the plot, hence my great interest in it. Bachmann created a story of a woman, who married a man, and who's been tortuing her in a physical and mental way. She's trying to get away from him, and when she is found by her brother in a horrible state, almost as if she was dead, they decide to travel together to Egypt, and she decides to fight with what her husband did to her, but she's also running away, and finally she seems to give up. It is a difficult read, full of pain and extracts from the past of the main character, Franza, touching on a theme of medical experiments on prisoners conducted by Nazi doctors during the IIWW.
The topic of the book is really difficult and stays in one's head for longer but it hasn't been an extremely interesting book, it doesn't focus enough (for me) on what happened with Franza. It is also incomplete, as it is one of the latest books written by Bachmann, just before her death.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had tried to read this book several times but would never persevere and thusly concluded that Bachmann just wasn't for me. Part of the initial determent was that the story is partly set in Egypt, and I find all things (ancient and beyond, as Martin is a geologist) Egypt are not in my field of interest. Immature reason to refuse great literature, I know, but that's how it sometimes goes.

Anyway, I have read it for exam preparation this time around (lecture on Female Austrian Writers, University of Vienna Dept. of German) and am glad to have done so as stilistically, another world opened up upon reading. Her use of language is excellent and conveys Franza's / Martin's stream of thought brilliantly. Reading this has been like riding on a wave, there's this flow in Bachmann's language that continues to intrigue me and that I'm looking forward to explore further.

[Eddy64 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ci sono libri che lasciano il segno, colpiscono, non lasciano indifferenti, restano nella memoria (di quanti invece anche a distanza di pochi anni o mesi ricordiamo poco o nulla?). Il caso Franza è uno di questi. Un viaggio nella malattia della protagonista, ma anche come dichiarato dalla stessa autrice la storia di un delitto, di un assassino come se ne commettono tanti nell’ambito delle relazioni familiari, i più crudeli e difficili da scoprire, dissimulati da morti naturali, da suicidi. Il caso Franza è uno di questi, dove il marito, un noto psichiatra di Vienna ha umiliato e violentato verbalmente (e forse anche fisicamente) la moglie, riducendola a un caso clinico nel silenzio del loro ambiente alto borghese e perbenista fino all’ipocrisia. Il romanzo inizia con la fuga di Franza (Franziska) o meglio con l’accorrere in suo aiuto del fratello Martin e il loro incontrarsi nella casa dei genitori in Carinzia. Franza non è più la stessa di quando erano ragazzi, e lei sorella maggiore di qualche anno proteggeva il fratello minore: ora o ruoli si sono rovesciati ed è lei, minata nel corpo e nello spirito, a chiedere di seguirlo in un lungo viaggio in Egitto. Franza può superare la malattia ma non guarire dentro di sé, in un paese postcoloniale, fra spiagge semideserte e tombe dei faraoni, ha pochi momenti felici a contatto con la popolazione indigena, ma il suo è un lungo e tenebroso percorso verso la fine, cercata, voluta, desiderata. Poco o nulla riesce a fare Martin, che ha un rapporto speciale con la sorella (ai limiti dell’incestuoso?). Romanzo purtroppo incompiuto, che offre una visione molto pessimistica del mondo occidentale appena uscito dal nazismo che a nuove violenze, questa volta più nascoste. La scrittura è perfetta, la narrazione per lo più indiretta calamita immediatamente l’attenzione del lettore, le occasioni leggere da gesta di coppia borghese in vacanza esotica subito intervallate da svolte dure e crudeli da digerire. Disperato e sottilmente angosciante come pochi romanzi riescono a esserlo. Consigliatissimo e quattro stelle.

[Valentina Messina · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Dolore, strana parola, strana cosa, riferita al corpo nella storia naturale dell'uomo, trasmigrata dal corpo e resa più dirompente nel suo cervello. Io sono nel deserto per liberarmi del mio dolore, e se non me ne libero il dolore che infuria dentro la mia testa, dentro i miei organi respiratori, dentro le mie coronarie e fino alle estremità contorte, questo folle dolore che di ora in ora sceglie un campo diverso per mettermi alla prova, la mia mascella per serrarla, i miei denti per farli battere, le mie mani perché diventino sorde, penzolanti come corpi estranei lungo i fianchi, e perché la tazza mi cada di mano, e se di questo dolore non mi libero più, non in queste ginocchia che si piegano, non in questi occhi in cui dopo la morte temporanea le pupille ballano e vengono storte. E se di questo dolore non mi libero più...”

Un anno fa ero rimasta incantata dalla lettura di Malina e solo adesso, dopo aver letto i frammenti di questi due romanzi incompiuti, non posso che rimpiangere ulteriormente la prematura e drammatica morte di Ingeborg Bachmann. Eppure immagino che le mie conclusioni non sarebbero state nemmeno troppo differenti da quelle di adesso, dal momento che riesco comunque a considerare “cause di morte” una delle mie trilogie preferite.

[Trounin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Живя светской жизнью, будешь рассказывать про подобных тебе. Именно так желается думать, когда приступаешь к чтению произведения Ингеборг Бахман. Эта писательница, прожившая короткую жизнь, была примечательным представителем своего ремесла. Говорят, поныне её имя имеет значение для мира германоязычной литературы. В числе прочих, Бахман — одна из тех австрийских писателей, кто выдвигался на Нобелевскую премию. Во всём прочем, ежели кому и становится интересно творчество Ингеборг — люди обычно случайные, по причине довольно прозаической — мало кто выбирает для ознакомления творчество писателей из Австрии, если это не кто-то из тех, кто успел состояться ещё при Австро-Венгрии, либо тогда начинал свой творческий путь. В целом, толком не интересуясь художественными изысканиями Бахман, с той же случайностью оказываешься вынужден познакомиться с одной из её работ, ещё и имеющий подзаголовок, говорящий, что перед читателем всего лишь набросок к роману.

(c) Trounin

[manuleggecose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Della Bachmann mi aveva già colpita “Malina”, e non riesco ancora oggi a togliermi dalla testa il ricordo di questo capolavoro.
“Il Libro Franza” l’ho trovato, come il precedente, meraviglioso e orribile allo stesso tempo, per la caratterizzazione psicologicamente parlando impeccabile dei personaggi e per dei temi trattati che, in un modo o nell’altro, coinvolgono emotivamente.
Lo consiglio per chi ha voglia di mettersi in gioco leggendo un capolavoro con l’unico difetto di non essere stato terminato, e soprattutto lo consiglio per chi non sente di star vivendo la propria emotività.
Non è un libro, è un portale per osservare la distruzione delle donne, del loro spirito e del loro corpo, in altre parti del mondo, in altri tempi, che non si allontanano mai dal nostro.

[nina_blublog · Rating 1 out of 5]

Arrivata a pag. 95 non ci ho capito nulla. Dovrebbe essere una riflessione sui delitti che si possono compiere, anche in modo innocuo, inconsapevole. Questo non l’ho visto, mi paiono solo le farneticazioni di una drogata pazza. 95 pagine mi paiono tante per non averci ancora capito nulla. ABBANDONATO

[Amelia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This wasn't probably the best book to start with the work of this author, because these are unfinished pieces. And they are probably even weirder, than her usual writing. But I really enjoyed huge parts of both novellas and I will definitely read more by her.

[Sigrid Rodian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Synes det var tydeligt at bøgerne aldrig var blevet færdige. Sammenlignet med Malina er de her to fortællinger mindre præcise i sit sprog, uden referencer og internheder og mindre eksperimenterende i sit format, måske var de blevet det, hvis hun havde overlevet til selv at gøre dem færdige

[Anna rzk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Za kazdym razem
❤️❤️❤️

[Sarah]

Sterven was in deze lente een gegeven, en leven ook.

[Erwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75

[Jets · Rating 4 out of 5]

„warum ist mir das nie aufgefallen, dass er alle Menschen zerlegte, bis nichts mehr da war, nichts geblieben außer einem Befund“

[O · Rating 5 out of 5]

the fact that todesarten will never be finished haunts me

[Hefei Cao · Rating 4 out of 5]

在图书馆借了纸书 真的不好读不好读不好读，可以看到和malina里类似的线索和人名，但难懂多了，让我疯狂怀疑我的阅读能力。比较喜欢人物疯一点的自白（当然整本书其实都有点疯疯的）

[Kevin Chen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic.

[Ema G · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book of Franza is a confession of one strong, misunderstood woman.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book of Franza made me cry.

Really, it did.

I have rather personal reasons for it to have made me cry, but really, it was the whole emphasis on the voiceless, and words, and...

It's very hard to describe. It's a little sad that it's an unfinished book, but it's still extremely powerful.

[Nalia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Between two and three stars, i only decided to rate it higher, not because of what i felt while reading it, but because of what i felt when i closed the book. Fast writing, sometimes incomprehensible, very personal and deep. Not for the many, a book worth the try.

[Alison FJ]

Beautiful and sad, a rare example of Austrian literature that engages both feminism and white supremacy. This exceptional translation makes the unfinished manuscript accessible to English readers, with important but brief and carefully selected explanatory notes.

[Christiane Alsop · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are her unfinished novels from the trilogy. Hard to read fiction but most insightful.