A sculptor in 1920s New York and a writer in 2020s Liguria connect over the great question of what makes true art.
DAS GEWICHT EINES VOGELS BEIM FLIEGEN
(The Weight of a Bird in Flight)
by Dana Grigorcea
Penguin, February 2024
In 1926, full of hope and longing, the ambitious young sculptor Constantin Avis moves to New York. A famous gallery owner wants to take him under his wing and facilitate his great breakthrough in this city of dreams. Constantin floats through his new life buoyed by an exciting new love affair, and the prospect of success – but threatens to lose touch with reality. How far can his art really take him? A whole century later, this is the question that Dora sets out to answer. It is early springtime on the Ligurian coast, and she is working on a novel about Constantin. She has moved here together with her son and a nanny, to find the peace that usually eludes her in her everyday life as an artist and mother. But the deeper she dives, the more her own story becomes intertwined with Constantin’s. Eventually, she realises that she can answer the sculptor’s questions only with her own life. An exceptionally charming tale of the unbreakable bond between art and life – as light as a feather, and yet so powerful that its thoughts will linger with you for a long time.
The Swiss-Romanian writer Dana Grigorcea was born in Bucharest in 1979 and has a degree in German and Dutch studies. She has won worldwide acclaim for her novels and short stories, including An Instinctive Feeling of Innocence and The Lady with the Maghrebi Dog. Her novel Those Who Never Die won the 2022 Swiss Book Prize and was longlisted for the 2021 German Book Prize. Dana Grigorcea is also the winner of the prestigious 2015 Ingeborg Bachmann/3sat Award. Her books have been translated into numerous languages.
Paula grew up in Minsk, was sent to New York when she was young, dreamt of studying medicine and was a committed anarchist. But then she met her future husband, the founder of the state of Israel, David Ben-Gurion – and at the end of her life, she finds herself in a kibbutz in the Negev Desert. Her husband is expecting the arrival of his friend, Konrad Adenauer, who has just resigned as German Chancellor. Once again, it is down to Paula to organise the visit and arrange everything. Poverty, war, motherhood, and – again and again – loneliness: this novel is a memorial to a strong, courageous woman, who had to make many compromises in life, and became the First Lady of a country in which she did not believe. And who, even in old age, never stops doubting, searching and hoping.
Muse, secretary, wife: these are some of the labels used to describe the women whose influence on history has been erased. Their achievements have brought honour and fame to the men close to them – such as Karl Marx, Bertolt Brecht and Albert Einstein, who couldn’t have done what they did without their female friends, daughters or lovers – but they themselves remain largely unknown. The list includes scientists like Rosalind Franklin and Lise Meitner, who, unlike their male colleagues, were never celebrated for their discoveries; and authors and artists like Marie Hirsch, Lou Andreas-Salomé and Hedwig Thun, who hid behind male pseudonyms all their lives in order to be taken seriously. In « Stolen Fame », Schöler tells their stories, introducing us to the women who changed human history and showing that there are still issues around participation and visibility. Behind every successful man is a system that empowers him – and that system stands in every woman’s way.
In a speculative future, Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat room, where a single juror, selected from hundreds of candidates, is able to inhabit the defendant’s lived experience, to see as if through their eyes.