Author Description

Austrian Studies 32 is dedicated to the writings and legacy of Ingeborg Bachmann, one of the most important twentieth-century European authors writing in German. Her work and literary afterlife reflect her coming of age in Austria under fascism, as well as her incisive and transnational engagement with a wide corpus of literature, philosophy and critical theory. Some of the contributions in this volume take a broad, often comparative approach, others take the form of close readings, uncovering still more layers of meaning in her texts. Ecocritical and decolonial readings are presented alongside inquiries into the complex fields of translation, gender, and neurophysiology. Several of the contributions read Bachmann with other writers and texts, mutually illuminating both. Taken as a whole, this volume offers new ways of thinking about and reading Bachmann's work. It invites us to reappraise and enlarge our understanding of her oeuvre, as well as that of other authors and thinkers. In connection with one of the last short stories Bachmann published during her lifetime, 'Drei Wege zum See' [Three Paths to the Lake, 1972], the author remarked that 'Österreich - das ist etwas, das immer weitergeht für mich' [Austria, that's something that keeps going for me]. In the same manner, her work keeps going, becoming ever richer through the renewed act of reading Bachmann now. Volume 32 of Austrian Studies is edited by Andrea Capovilla, Katya Krylova and Marlen Mairhofer.