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Am I a Redundant Human Being? (German and Austrian Literature Series) Paperback – August 24, 2010

5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 4 ratings

For the first time in English, a contemporary and friend of Virginia Woolf and Stefan Zweig gives us the definitive portrait of a woman lost on the margins of modern life.
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Written in the 1930s by Austrian author Hartwig, this remarkable and remarkably bare tale feels as edgily modern as it must have when it was first written. Luise Schmidt, a nondescript secretary, uses her invisibility to erotic effect. Forced to by her father (and unpromising grades) to attend trade school, Luise learns to be a secretary. However, she is frequently fired for incompetence, learning in her successive employment to ingratiate herself slavishly to the will of more powerful tormentors. She loses her one true admirer, the medical student and socialist Emil K., because of anxious, incessant self-belittlement, and rids herself of an older, repugnant fiancé by submitting to a handsome con artist for a single night. Finally, she meets Elizabeth, a volatile young acting student with an endlessly entertaining personality. Through her, Luisa experiences something like adventure, even in the fantasy of appropriating Elizabeth's boyfriend, the forbidding civil engineer Egon Z. Is it fault or fate that Luise spends her life stumbling around "with feelings that were too big for her"? Hartwig (1893-1967) delineates her narrator's masochism with a devastatingly understated finesse, proving herself an accomplished novelist.
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Review

“A mundane office worker descends into erotic obsession. . . . Mela Hartwig’s novel . . . is the profession of an astonishing self-abasement: a tantalizing, unforgettable book.” (Die Presse)

“Finally, the time has come for Mela Hartwig’s rediscovery! The contradictions, the constant fluctuation between passion and dispassionate observation, make this office romance—written in the form of a heated confession—outrageously modern and thrilling.” (Frankfurter Rundschau)

“[A]n heiress of Kleist...” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Dalkey Archive Press (August 24, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 151 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1564785815
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1564785817
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.74 x 0.47 x 8.28 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 4 ratings

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Mela Hartwig
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5 out of 5 stars
4 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2015
    Beautifully written novel by an unduly neglected author. Her literary style and tone reminds me very much of Alice McDermott's

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  • L. E.
    5.0 out of 5 stars La vie au temps de Freud
    Reviewed in France on May 2, 2012
    Excellent livre pour donner une idée de comment pensaient les jeunes femmes à l'époque de Freud. Cela pourrait être une autobiographie d'une de ses patientes.