It is not often that you can say only a woman could have written this book, but women in particular will understand the heroine's loving devotion to the details of making and keeping life, every day felt as a victory against everything that would like to undermine and destroy.--Doris Lessing

Brilliant in its sustainment of dread, in its peeling away of old layers of reality to expose a raw way of seeing and feeling. I know of no closer study in claustrophobia and liberation, and of an independence whose severity is at once ecstatic and doomed.--Nicole Krauss

Haushofer's sentences are simple and concise, and full of careful thought. The ideas she expresses are so important that you wonder how you have managed to get by without them.--Missouri Williams "The Nation"

This potent 1958 novella from Austrian writer Haushofer (The Wall) takes the form of a mother's agitated confession. ... Haushofer vividly evokes Anna's shame, fear, numbness, regret, and anger, revealing the depths of claustrophobic unhappiness in her household. This one hits hard.-- "Publishers Weekly (starred review)"

Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation

Pub date: 2025-07-01

Length: 80 pages