Malina or On Disap­pearing

“It is a very old, very strong wall that nobody can fall from, that nobody can break through, from which no voice can ever come again. It was murder.”

Ingeborg Bachmann’s only completed novel, Malina, is about the disappearance of an unnamed female character: Caught between Malina and Ivan, who does not return her love, the aimless text shows a narrator trying and failing to find her place in a world dominated by men. Driven by her own desire, the meaninglessness she feels as a woman and author, and the traumas that haunt her from the Second World War, her story unfolds into disaster: The narrator is linguistically and symbolically extinguished, disappearing in a crack in the wall of her home. “kainkollektiv” has re-envisioned the novel as a feminist search for identity and an exploration of the horrors of fascism, traces of Nuremberg’s history with National Socialism and repression in the post-war period.

kainkollektiv” has re-envisioned the novel as a feminist search for identity and an exploration of the horrors of fascism, traces of Nuremberg’s history with National Socialism and repression in the post-war period.