Resonant of nineteenth-century village tales and of such authors as Adalbert Stifter and her contemporary Robert Walser, the stories in The Country Road are largely set in the Swiss countryside. In these tales, the archaic and the modern collide. In one story, a young woman on an exhausting country walk recoils at a passing bicyclist but accepts a ride from a wagon, taking her seat on a trunk with a snake coiled inside. Death is everywhere in her work. As Ullmann writes, “sometimes the whole world appears to be painted on porcelain, right down to the dangerous cracks.” This delicate but fragile beauty, with its ominous undertones, gives Regina Ullmann her unique voice.
Ullmann is a one-off, an original, a really deeply peculiar writer.
— Michael Hofmann, NYRB
A triumphant translation.
— Publishers Weekly
Ullman delicately balances each of her characters’ emotions on a pinpoint, presenting both the beauty and fragility of every momentary feeling.
— Jan Anspach, Words Without Borders
It’s as if Ullmann takes biblical wisdom literature, strips it of all moral judgment, and then spins it with rotating moments of natural bliss and existential fear.
— Jonathan Sturgeon, Flavorwire
Her voice is something holy.
— Thomas Mann
A pure and noble poetic talent: everything is full of mystery.
— Herman Hesse
To read your book for me is such a multiplicity of joys that I can only gradually cope with it.
— Rainer Maria Rilke (in a letter to Regina Ullmann)
Regina Ullmann has a sense of authenticity and a touch of genius.