Hain

The narrator undertakes three journeys in Esther Kinsky's novel "Geländeroman." All three lead her to Italy, but not to the well-known places listed in art guides, not to Rome, Florence, or Siena, but to remote regions and areas – such as Olevano Romano, a small town located in the hills northeast of the Italian capital, or the Valli di Comacchio, a lagoon landscape in the Po Delta, a water world dominated half by birds and half by farmland wrested from the water. Between these two explorations in the mountains and the plains, the third journey takes the narrator back to her childhood: memories of numerous trips through 1970s Italy emerge like fragmented film sequences, dominated by the figure of her father. Esther Kinsky's excursions and wanderings – in memory as well as in reality, whether walking or traveling.