BOOK REVIEW ASJA. A ONE WAY LOVE Author: Roser Amills From the reader report by: Sabine Giersberg In her extremely well done novel, author Roser Amills from Mallorca (*1974) takes up a dictum by Ricardo Piglias and tells the story of Latvian actress, director and theatre maker Asja Lacis (18911979), who is almost unknown in Germany but played a crucial role for the life of philosopher Walter Benjamin, a role which is ignored or played down by Benjamin´s friends, colleagues and biographers. […] Author Roser Amills moulded the well-researched, real events into a story which is marvellously fictitious. Certainly, her work as a journalist was helpful with this. Her characters are lively, they appear with all their fascinating features and contradictions, at moments of highest ecstasy or at low points of their lives. The wickerwork of personal relations is deciphered in a comprehensibly psychological way, and while doing so, almost in passing light is shed on the historical background – topics such as ideological blindness, totalitarianism, exclusion etc. The style is fluent and captivating, on the whole the novel is well structured. An informative afterword and a chronology of the events are helpful for the reader´s orientation. […] It is time to present this story, which may be supposed to be easily translated in German, to a wider audience in Germany. Conclusion: a clear recommendation and an invitation to leave oneself to this enriching and inspiring reading.
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