Narrator

The first person narrator is an unnamed woman of indiscriminate age. At the start of the novel, she identifies herself as an "Official Austrian," with brown eyes and blonde hair (4). Besides these descriptions, the only other information the narrator explicitly offers about herself is that she lives on “a small section of the Ungargasse" in the city of Vienna (5). The narrator's character, therefore, is inherently enigmatic. Over the course of the novel, she both attempts to embrace and defy the notion that she is just "another unknown woman" (144). At the start of the novel, the narrator is living in an apartment with one of her lovers, Malina. Her other lover, Ivan, lives a few doors down. Though she is attached to Malina, the narrator is determined to convince herself of her preference for Ivan. Ivan seems better for her, not only because their names fit together, but because...