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Irmgard Keun was born in Berlin in 1905. After leaving school and trying her luck as an actress, she began to write in 1929 and found instant success with her early novels, which were blacklisted by the Nazis for their 'immoral' depictions of the Modern Young Woman. From 1936 to 1938 she travelled through Europe with the writer Joseph Roth and published several novels, including Child of All Nations in 1938. Roth died in 1939 and Keun spent the war in Germany, living semi-legally under an assumed name. Following the war, she made a living writing humorous sketches for radio and magazines, published one more novel and had a daughter, whom she brought up alone. At the end of her life, her books gained a new following from a younger generation of feminists. Irmgard Keun died in 1982. Michael Hofmann is the author of several books of poems and a book of criticism, Behind the Lines, and the translator of many modern and contemporary authors, including Joseph Roth. Penguin publish his translations of Kafka's Metamorphosis and Other Stories and Ernst Junger's Storm of Steel.
An utterly compelling look at pre - World War II Germany, first published in 1938 and available in English for the first time.Keun was born in Berlin in 1905. She achieved critical success with the novels Gilgi - One of Us (1931) and The Artificial Silk Girl (1932). Her witty, candid portraits of Weimar Germany were banned by the Nazis, and she spent several years in exile. This book provides a child's-eye view of Europe on the brink of World War II. Keun's young narrator, Kully, is a refugee, and she offers a succinct explanation for her family's exodus from Germany: Her father is a writer, but the government will no longer allow him to write the things he wants to write. When I was in Germany, before, I did go to school, and that's where I learned to read and write , she says. I wonder what the point is of children in Germany still having to learn to read and write? This philosophical query - naive, incisive, funny - is typical of Kully. Keun has no illusions about the innocence or unknowingness of children. Kully is one of literature's great child narrators, and her creator manages to generate pathos without resorting to melodrama or sentimental exaggeration. Hofmann's unadorned translation enlivens the work.Poignant, especially for contemporary readers who know that far greater horrors were still to come. (Kirkus Reviews)
