This is the story of a pilgrimage by Johnson to the gravesite of the writer Ingeborg Bachmann. Johnson meticulously observes the landscape of the city by layering its background with Bachmann's own letters, interviews and writings. The result is a personal consideration of a life and a friendship.
A moody and mournful meditation on the death and life of a writer, by another of her generation
A Trip to Klagenfurt is the story of a pilgrimage. Only days after the burial of Ingeborg Bachmann, writer Uwe Johnson journeyed to her gravesite in the Austrian city of Klagenfurt, where Bachmann 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, which Johnson uses to illuminate his entire generation -- one haunted by a history buried in the hope that it will be forgotten. Eccentric, brooding, and innovative, A Trip to Klagenfurt invites the reader to consider the vast forces behind a single extraordinary life, and to mourn that life's passing.
