The story of a passionate love affair.
EINE LIEBE IN PARIS: ROMY & ALAIN
(A Love in Paris: Romy and Alain)
by Thilo Wydra
Heyne, October 2020
(chez Verlagsgruppe Random House – voir catalogue)
Actors Romy Schneider and Alain Delon were the dream couple of the 1960s. They fell in love when they first met in Paris in 1958 on the set of the Arthur Schnitzler adaptation Christine, and their extraordinary roller-coaster affair would last five years. Four years later, they are reunited in front of the camera, playing lovers in the cult film The Swimming Pool, and thus begins a friendship that would last until Romy Schneider’s untimely and tragic death in 1982. When she died, it was Alain Delon who took care of everything. She was the love of his life: « Our love didn’t end. It changed. » To tell their story, the author and biographer Thilo Wydra has conducted countless in-depth interviews with Romy Schneider and Alain Delon’s friends and colleagues in France and Germany, among them Jane Birkin, Senta Berger, Mario Adorf, Jean-Claude Carrière, Michael Verhoeven, Volker Schlöndorff, and many others – and in their personal recollections the German-French lovers come alive once again.
Thilo Wydra, born in 1968, studied comparative studies, German, art history and film science. He has been freelancing as an author and journalist since the 1990s. In 1996 he became a member of the Verband der deutschen Filmkritik (VdFK) and has since then been on juries at international film festivals. He has authored numerous contributions to books on film and film lexica, writes for newspapers and magazines and has written biographies of Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly and others.
Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of this felt right; and as she got older, she longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling. Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn’t fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life. Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. By exploring this truth in poignant and lyrical essays, Taussig illustrates the need for more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity. SITTING PRETTY challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we set to work to write an entirely different story.
John Lennon achieved with the Beatles a level of superstardom that defied classification. « We were the best bloody band there was, » he said. « There was nobody to touch us. » In the summer of 1980, Lennon signs with a label and hires a top producer to recruit the best session musicians, ready to record new music for the first time in years. They are awestruck when Lennon dashes off « (Just Like) Starting Over. » Lennon is back in peak form, with his best songwriting since « Imagine. » THE LAST DAYS OF JOHN LENNON is the amazing story of John Lennon’s life and career, from his earliest days and first songs up to his last seconds. It tells the story of the most profound rock-and-roll genius of all time-and of Mark David Chapman, the consummate Nowhere Man who took him from us. Enriched by exclusive interviews with Lennon’s friends and associates, including Paul McCartney, the book is a true-crime drama about two men who changed history. One whose indelible songs still enrich our lives today-and the other who ended the beautiful music with five pulls of a trigger.
