Essays,
Luchterhand Literary Publishers
A personal history of literature from one of the most interesting writers of her generation
We think we know them all – Droste-Hülshoff, Virginia Woolf, Ingeborg Bachmann. After all, they are literary icons. But how much do we really know about the connections between their lives and their works? Ulrike Draesner brings together those women authors important to her as a reader and writer, drawing them closer to us through intelligent insights and examining to what extent their works are relevant to contemporary writing. How do you write a life? How do you deal with the mazes of time, fiction, and biography? Draesner demonstrates, too, how far the ‘woman writer’ has always represented a scandal, attractive and unorthodox, a threat and a mystery at once.
‘At the end came ingenuity. That ingenuity was called Ulrike Draesner and she spoke one evening in honour of Ingeborg Bachmann.’