Three Paths to the Lake (First Edition)

Ingeborg Bachman

ISBN 10: 0841910707 / ISBN 13: 9780841910706

Published by Holmes & Meier, New York, 1989

About this Item

New York: Holmes & Meier, 1989. First edition. First printing. Hardcover. Very Fine in a very fine dust jacket. Still sealed in publisher's original shrink-wrap. A pristine, unopened copy. Octavo, 212 pages. Three Paths to the Lake is Ingeborg Bachmann's second and final collection of short stories, comprising five narratives about Austrian women whose lives and relationships in the 1960s reveal the struggles of women in a postwar world. Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973) was an Austrian poet and writer whose works, including the novel Malina, established her as a leading voice of postwar German-language literature; she received the Georg Büchner Prize in 1964. Three Paths to the Lake was published posthumously and stands as one of her major prose works. Translated from the Austrian, in English. You cannot find a better copy.

Seller Inventory # 4550

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Three Paths to the Lake (First Edition)
• Publisher: Holmes & Meier, New York
• Publication Date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0841910707
• ISBN 13: 9780841910706
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: New
• Dust Jacket Condition: New
• Seller catalogs:
  • Austrian Literature

About this title

Synopsis

"Three Paths to the Lake", Ingeborg Bachmann's second and final collection of short stories, consists of five narratives about the lives and loves of five different women. Socially uprooted and emotionally isolated, each protagonist struggles with possibilities for survival in the 1960s. Bachmann's portraits reflect a compassionate yet unswerving perception of humanity.

Reviews

Prize-winning Austrian-born Bachmann ( Malina ; The Thirtieth Year ) has influenced such writers as Max Frisch, Peter Handke, Christa Wolf and Gunter Grass; she died in 1973. Translated into English from the German for the first time, each of the five stories that make up this complex, finely wrought collection is a portrait of an Austrian woman in the late 1960s. Bachman's women are either fiercely independent, as Nadja, the well-traveled translator in "Word for Word," Elisabeth, the successful photographer in the introspective "Three Paths to the Lake," and Beatrix, the young woman who lives only to sleep and visit the beauty parlor in "Problems Problems"; or they're neurotically tied to their men, as Franziska, who fears her emotionally sadistic husband in "The Barking." Bachmann's central theme is the power of language to transform women's experience in a patriarchal society; the work is not only intellectually charged, but imaginative and evocative as well. Clearly influenced by Robert Musil, this powerful book could well become a classic.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.