Killing Stella

By Marlen Haushofer
Translated by Shaun Whiteside             

"A book that gets more, not less, mysterious as it goes. I am glad that such novels exist; they are the literary equivalent of a sudden plunge into icy waters. They shock, they clarify." —Peter C. Baker, The New York Times

Never before in English, Killing Stella is a gripping, razor-sharp novella about a fractured marriage by the ferociously talented author of The Wall.

Left alone for the weekend while her husband and two children are visiting her in-laws, Anna recounts the addition of her friend’s daughter, Stella, into their already tense and tumultuous household. Staring out the window at her garden, Anna worries about the baby bird in the linden tree, about her husband, Richard (who flits from one adultery to another), about her son’s gloomy demeanor and her daughter’s obliviousness, and most of all, about Stella, a confused teenager who will meet a sudden and disastrous end.

A domestic horror story that blossoms into a catastrophe, Marlen Haushofer's Killing Stella distills many of the themes of Marlen Haushofer’s acclaimed novel The Wall into a claustrophobic, gothic, shattering novella.

Paperback
80 pages
New Directions, 2025
4.5 x 0.3 x 7.3 inches
ISBN 9780811238656     
Fiction