Description
For the first time in English, all the short fiction that Ingeborg Bachmann wrote in her lifetime in a single volume
Complete Stories spans three decades of work from one of the most important German-language writers of the last century. Each of these short stories, beautifully translated by Philip Boehm and Tess Lewis, depict people at a crossroads, facing decisions about life, truth, love, and death. In addition to the collections "Three Paths to the Lake" and "The Thirtieth Year," this volume includes many stories that have never appeared in English before.
In this collection, we find Ingeborg Bachmann exploring the limits of language and experience, grappling with the maladies of modern civilization, with love and sex, with patriarchy and its brutalities: “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….”
Reviews
"Bachmann writes in a Cubist prose of sudden cutoffs and reconnections that is acute and moving. She manages to convey that women are playing out the Europe of their time and before their time." — The New Yorker
"Bachmann’s voice is rare and strong—strong enough to transport us to a new domain of fiction." — Los Angeles Review of Books
"A portrait, in language, of female consciousness, truer than anything written since Sappho’s Fragment 31." — Rachel Kushner
"Bachmann writes with quicksilver intelligence and intensity. One of the great pleasures of this excellent collection is the chance to watch her talent develop and her originality come into its own. A multifaceted collection by a brilliant writer who died too young." — Kirkus Reviews (starred)
"This marvelous omnibus is representative of Bachmann's linguistic inventiveness, philosophical bent, and political passion.... Glorious, sublime." — Publishers Weekly (starred)
Also By: Ingeborg Bachmann 
The Honditsch Cross
Paperback, 2025
A powerful historical work about war and its victims, never before in English, from the celebrated author of Malina
Malina
Paperback, 2019
Now a New Directions book, the legendary novel that is “equal to the best of Virginia Woolf and Samuel Beckett” (New York Times Book Review)
Malina
E Book, 2019
Now a New Directions book, the legendary novel that is “equal to the best of Virginia Woolf and Samuel Beckett” (New York Times Book Review)
The Honditsch Cross
E Book
A powerful historical work about war and its victims, never before in English, from the celebrated author of Malina
Also By: Philip Boehm
Malina
Paperback, 2019
Now a New Directions book, the legendary novel that is “equal to the best of Virginia Woolf and Samuel Beckett” (New York Times Book Review)Malina
E Book, 2019
Now a New Directions book, the legendary novel that is “equal to the best of Virginia Woolf and Samuel Beckett” (New York Times Book Review)
The Fox and Dr. Shimamura
Paperback, 2019
A delicious mix of East and West, of wonder and irony, The Fox and Dr. Shimamura is a most curious novel
The Fox and Dr. Shimamura
E Book, 2019
A delicious mix of East and West, of wonder and irony, The Fox and Dr. Shimamura is a most curious novel
Also By: Tess Lewis
The Honditsch Cross
Paperback, 2025
A powerful historical work about war and its victims, never before in English, from the celebrated author of MalinaThe Honditsch Cross
E Book
A powerful historical work about war and its victims, never before in English, from the celebrated author of Malina