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The Complete Stories
Not yet published
Expected 24 Nov 26For 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 “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….”
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 “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….”
- GenresShort Stories
512 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication November 24, 2026
About the author
Ingeborg Bachmann
181 books679 followers“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
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
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
As it says on the tin really, Complete Stories by Ingeborg Bachmann is exactly that. This book combines all of the late author's previous short story collections such as The Thirtieth Year, Three Paths to the Lake, and previously unpublished works into a single volume.
What a wonderful introduction to an author that has long been on my radar but I've never got around to until now.
What struck me while reading this collection was how ahead of her time she was in a newly minted post war world. Bachmann tackled difficult and controversial themes with ease to devastating effect. Her characters were rarely likeable but completely fascinating and compelling to follow.
Going through the collection it was also interesting to see how she evolved as a writer. The stories collected in The Thirtieth Year often take a poignant, sometimes jaded, but always unyielding look at fascism at large and in the home. In Three Paths to the Lake, Bachmann takes a completely different direction with five interwoven stories filled to the brim with tension and packed with engagingly neurotic characters.
Unsurprisingly, her writing lost none of its ability to captivate.
Personal highlights were Youth in an Austrian Town and Everything.
Highly recommended.
With thanks to Penguin for the ARC.
What a wonderful introduction to an author that has long been on my radar but I've never got around to until now.
What struck me while reading this collection was how ahead of her time she was in a newly minted post war world. Bachmann tackled difficult and controversial themes with ease to devastating effect. Her characters were rarely likeable but completely fascinating and compelling to follow.
Going through the collection it was also interesting to see how she evolved as a writer. The stories collected in The Thirtieth Year often take a poignant, sometimes jaded, but always unyielding look at fascism at large and in the home. In Three Paths to the Lake, Bachmann takes a completely different direction with five interwoven stories filled to the brim with tension and packed with engagingly neurotic characters.
Unsurprisingly, her writing lost none of its ability to captivate.
Personal highlights were Youth in an Austrian Town and Everything.
Highly recommended.
With thanks to Penguin for the ARC.
October 6, 2026
Published during the centennial year of Bachmann’s birth, The Complete Stories is a substantial and much needed contribution to the body of Bachmann’s work available to the English-language readers. Although most of the stories had been translated and published decades earlier, the new translation allows us to absorb the power of Bachmann’s language with fresh eyes.
My full review here: https://www.ronslate.com/on-the-compl...
My full review here: https://www.ronslate.com/on-the-compl...
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
100% my galley brag of the year (i've been reading this for months!). bachmann is just sublime. writing my longform review soon :)
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews