KILLING STELLA by Marlen Haushofer

Translated by Shaun Whiteside

Marlen Haushofer is best known for her cult classic novel, The Wall. A bit dystopian spec-fic, a bit Kafka, a bit philosophical meditation on isolation, it’s a book that seems to get rediscovered by each new generation of literature undergrads. For my part, I think it’s pretty good but… well… I never got the Haushofer love. Having now read Killing Stella, I absolutely do.

Killing Stella is smaller and quieter than The Wall. It’s a work of domestic realism; the story of a marriage in collapse and the collateral damage left in its wake. From the outset we know Stella is dead. That she jumped in front of a truck. The book is about knowing who she was and what brought her to such a terrible end. The narrator tells of taking her in as a favour to a friend, this schoolgirl who is seduced and dumped by the narrator’s husband.

The voice, tense and acidic, is the perfect vehicle for Haushofer’s remarkable insight into the human heart (and nether regions). The psychological drama often teeters on the unbearable - guilt, shame and anger duke it out on the page - but what a glorious disaster it is to behold.

Killing Stella by Marlen Haushofer (Tr. Shaun Whiteside)
New Directions, 2025 (First pub. 1958)
87 pages