Death in Persia (The Swiss List) - Hardcover

Schwarzenbach, Annemarie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0857420895 ISBN 13: 9780857420893

Publisher: Seagull Books, 2013

Synopsis

Since the rediscovery of her work in the late 1980s, Annemarie Schwarzenbach—journalist, traveler, archaeologist, opium addict, and antifascist novelist—has become a European cult figure among free spirited bohemians. Available in English for the first time and beautifully translated by Lucy Renner Jones, Death in Persia is a collage of the political and the private, documenting Schwarzenbach’s intimate feelings and public ideas during four trips to Persia between 1933 and 1939. From her reflections on individual responsibility in the lead-up to World War II to her reactions to accusations from her friends of having deserted Europe and the antifascist cause for Tehran, Schwarzenbach recorded a great deal about daily life in Persia, and, most personally, her ill-fated love affair with Jalé, the daughter of the Turkish ambassador. Chronologically preceding Schwarzenbach’s exquisite travelogue All the Roads are Open, an account of her automobile journey from Geneva to Afghanistan in 1939, Death in Persia is the enthralling diary of an astute observer standing at the crossroads of major events in history and a gorgeous new addition to Annemarie Schwarzenbach’s growing English-language oeuvre.

About this title

About the Author:

Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908–42) was a writer, journalist, and photographer, who worked periodically as an archaeologist. Lucy Renner Jones is a freelance translator living in Berlin; she translated Schwarzenbach’s LyricNovella, also published by Seagull Books.

Review:

“Death in Persia, no matter the high correlation with Schwarzenbach's real experience, is a finely crafted work.”

(Daniel Shvartsman Bookslut)

“Above all, [Schwarzenbach’s] discovery of the Orient was a personal one. But the author never loses sight of the historical and social context. . . . She shows no trace of colonialist arrogance. In fact, the pieces also reflect the experience of crisis, the loss of confidence which, in that decade, seized the long-arrogant culture of the West.”

(Süddeutsche Zeitung)

About this edition

• Publisher: Seagull Books
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0857420895
• ISBN 13: 9780857420893
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 156