The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, first published as Journal of My Other Self, is a 1910 novel by Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. The novel was the only work of prose of considerable length that he wrote and published. It is semiautobiographical and is written in an expressionistic style, dealing with themes of alienation, unfamiliarity, death by illness, longing, childhood memories and the Parable of the Prodigal Son. It was conceptualized and written whilst Rilke lived in Paris, mainly inspired by Sigbjørn Obstfelder's A Priest's Diary and Jens Peter Jacobsen's Niels Lyhne.