Synopses & Reviews
A Trip to Klagenfurt is the story of a pilgrimage. Only days after the death of renowned writer Ingeborg Bachmann, her contemporary Uwe Johnson journeyed to her gravesite in the Austrian city of Klagenfurt, where Backmann had grown up. Johnson meticulously observes the landscape of the city by layering its cultural, physical, and historical background with Bachmann's own letters, interviews, and largely autobiographical writings. The result is a personal consideration of a life and a friendship that Johnson uses to illuminate his entire generation-one haunted by a history buried in the hope that it will be forgotten. Eccentric, brooding, and experimental, A Trip to Klagenfurt invites the reader to consider the vast forces behind a single extraordinary life and to mourn that life's passing.
About the Author
Uwe Johnson (1934-1984) was the author of Anniversaries: From the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, Speculations about Jacob, The Third Book about Achim, and An Absence.