Der langangehaltene Atem (The Long-Drawn Breath)

A book about love and life, narrated at an extraordinary location.

Dead, stuffed animals fascinate the narrator, a painter who has received a commission from an unknown client to draw some of the exhibits in the natural history museum in Vienna. While wandering from room to room she muses about her last lover – the latest in a long line of failed relationships. The novel consists of her experiences in the museum, chats with her gay friend and her best woman-friend, the transsexual Venezuela, as well as letters, phone-calls and e-mail-exchanges with her patron. Critics have already started to compare Bettina Balàka with the leading Austrian writers, particularly Ingeborg Bachmann.