Annemarie Schwarzenbach,Lucy Renner Jones
Annemarie Schwarzenbachâ€”journalist, novelist, antifascist, archaeologist, and travelerâ€”has become a European cult figure for bohemian free spirits since the rediscovery of her works in the late 1980s. ,Lyric Novella, is her story of a young manâ€™s obsession with a Berlin variÃ©tÃ© actress. Despite having his future career mapped out for him in the diplomatic service, the young man begins to question all his family values under Sibylleâ€™s spell. His family, future, and social standing become irrelevant when set against his overriding compulsion to pick her up every night from the theater so they can go for a drive.Â Schwarzenbachâ€™s clear, psychologically acute prose makes this novella an evocative narrative, with many intriguing parallels to her own life. In fact, she admitted after publication that her hero was in fact a young woman, not a man, leaving little doubt that ,Lyric Novella, is a literary tale of lesbian love during socially and politically turbulent times.Â ,Praise for the German Edition,Â â€œThe subject of Annemarie Schwarzenbachâ€™s story is not failed loveâ€” Sibylleâ€™s apparent emotional coldnessâ€”but the failure of loveâ€”the protagonistâ€™s helpless inability, in the crucial moment, to accept his human responsibility toward the beloved.â€â€” ,Neue ZÃ¼rcher Zeitung,Â â€œThe work bears the face of its time, but it is so gentle, silent and veiled that one can barely exclude the person behind the mask.Â A mask is in fact this face, because the hero is a heroine who does not want to be seen.â€â€”,Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Fiction,Classics,GLBT,Queer,LGBT,European Literature,German Literature,Female Authors,Literature,Adult Fiction,Novella,Queer,Queer Lit
Lyric Novella