Society Is the Biggest Murder Scene of All: Adrian Nathan West on Ingeborg Bachmann’s “Malina”
In Ingeborg Bachmann’s only completed novel “Malina,” translated by Philip Boehm, the first-person narrator is unnamed, or her name is simply "I".
Adrian Nathan West is a novelist, essayist, and translator based in Spain. His works have appeared in numerous journals in print and online, including 3:AM, Words Without Borders, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Review of Contemporary Fiction. He has translated books from German, Catalan, and Spanish, as well as short pieces from Portuguese, French, and Italian, by authors ranging from Josef Winkler to Pere Gimferrer to Enrique Vila-Matas, and has worked with a wide array of publishers both small and large, including NYRB Classics. He is also a contributing editor at the online translation journal Asymptote.
In Ingeborg Bachmann’s only completed novel “Malina,” translated by Philip Boehm, the first-person narrator is unnamed, or her name is simply "I".
On “Miamification” by Armen Avanessian, which tries to imagine a "progressive politics equidistant from technological utopianism and technophobia.”
Adrian Nathan West presents his translation of an essay by the great Spanish prose writer Juan Benet (1927–1993).
Adrian Nathan West surveys the work of Korean-born German cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han, which has been making its way into English since 2015.
Adrian Nathan West appreciates the diversity of “Viktor Shklovsky: A Reader” edited by Alexandra Berlina.