Germany’s Best Female Novelist
Posted: August 1, 2011 Filed under: My Writing Leave a comment »Covering the renewed interest in German novelist Irmgard Keun’s Weimar-era writing may have been one of my favorite assignments yet. The woman led a fantastic life and wrote several books that, thanks to being heavily censored in 1930s Germany have only now been translated into English. It took a lot to get through the heavy-slang of the German books but The Artificial Silk Girl drew a gritty, accurate portrait of life in a country rocked by Depression and inflation — and the ways in which, even when totally impoverished, we try to carry on with our dancing. Without being too saccharine, what I loved most of all about researching this was realizing that this woman who had numerous flaws and vices still gave up everything for her writing. Inspiration for a drowning novelist.
