The Threshold and the Ledger

Since her untimely death in 1973, Ingeborg Bachmann has come to be regarded as one of the twentieth century's most important writers.

Unpacking a single Bachmann poem, novelist Tom McCarthy latches onto two of its central terms - the eponymous *threshold* and *ledger* - and takes off on a line of flight: through the work of Franz Kafka, David Lynch, Anne Carson, Sappho and Shakespeare. Can writing be understood as an experience of the threshold, a limit- or boundary- state? A condition of ecstasy or *ec-stasis*, standing outside of oneself? With identity ruptured and surpassed, how - and by whom - might such experience be recorded?

Appearing on the eve of Bachmann's centenary year, McCarthy's book argues for the centrality of her vision to the very act of literature itself.

**Ingeborg Bachmann** (25 June 1926 - 17 October 1973) was an Austrian poet and author. She is regarded as one of the major voices of German-language literature in the 20th century. In 1963, she was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.