Alexandra Kurmann 
Intertextual Weaving in the Work of Linda Le 
Imagining the Ideal Reader

Intertextual Weaving in the Work of Linda L: Imagining the Ideal Reader uncovers the primary textual relationship that Linda L (1963 ), the most prolific Francophone author of the Vietnamese diaspora, fosters with a literary precursor of Austrian descent: the feminist writer-in-exile, Ingeborg Bachmann (19261973). This study offers an overdue exploration of the notably European roots of L’s writerly formation. It traces an unexamined feminist import in her work to a sixteen-year inter- and intra-textual engagement with Bachmann and positions the latter as an imagined ideal reader of L’s oeuvre. Intertextual analyses of Bachmann’s post-war novel, Malina, with L’s literary essays, early fiction, and trilogy, reveal that to overcome the challenges of writing in exile L adopts an alternative literary fore-bear of the European tradition.