THE HONDITSCH CROSS by Ingeborg Bachmann

Translated by Tess Lewis

If you’ve ever wanted to feel like a deadset underachiever, I reckon this might just be your golden ticket. I mean, sure, we all know that Ingeborg Bachmann was one of the great post-War Austrian novelists and that her masterpiece, Malina, stands alone as - to quote Rachel Kushner - the truest portrait of female consciousness since Sappho. But holy crap, if The Honditsch Cross is anything to go by, Bachmann came to the literary world almost fully formed.

Written when she was eighteen, after her dad suggested she tell the story behind a local landmark, The Honditsch Cross recounts the events leading up to a single battle at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, when the Austrians drove the French from the borderlands. It’s a tale of small town life, and the ravages of occupation and competing nationalisms. There’s a sweet but tragic love story thrown in for good measure, and some philosophical thumb-twiddling about religious piety, but really this is a ferocious work of feminist historical fiction that lays bear the senseless destruction wrought by men. Spare. Unsentimental. Brutal.

And to think, this was Bachmann’s apprenticeship novel. What a marvel.

The Honditsch Cross by Ingeborg Bachmann (Tr. Tess Lewis)
New Directions, 2025 (First pub. 1978)
99 pages