My Life in Three Centuries

From a toddler's fall into a puddle on the K-Dam in Thirties Berlin to the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11, Felicia Rosshandler has made the 20th Century her own in ruminations spanning World War II, the Holocaust, Batista's Cuba, the Bomb, McCarthy, Existential Paris, the Vietnam War, and eternal New York. Yet when the 21st Century outpaces her, she can only shudder.

Felicia Rosshandler was born in Berlin and is the product of three antagonistic cultures: the German, the French and the Spanish. She landed in the United States at the age of seventeen where she quickly added Anglo pragmatism to the salad. She has raised three American sons. Her longtime partner, the Cuban writer Edmundo Desnoes, died in 2023.Always startling, her ability to navigate different cultures has opened bright and dark doors. Her novel "Passing Through Havana" examines the multicultural experience as propelled by love and war. Subsequent writing has dealt with the cataclysm of modernity and dislocation.Rosshandler has worked for the international press, including Tokyo Shimbun, Paris Match and LIFE Español. While at LIFE she developed an eye for photography. Her series of photographs of naked Barbie, "The Venus of America," has been exhibited at The Kitchen and galleries in New York, Woodstock and Venice, Italy. She lives in Manhattan.