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House of Exile: The Lives and Times of Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kroeger-Mann
Author(s): Evelyn Juers (Author)
- Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
- Publication Date: 10 May 2011
- Language: English
- Print length: 384 pages
- ISBN-10: 0374173168
- ISBN-13: 9780374173166
Book Description
In 1933 the author and political activist Heinrich Mann and his partner, Nelly Kroeger, fled Nazi Germany, finding refuge first in the south of France and later, in great despair, in Los Angeles, where Nelly committed suicide in 1944 and Heinrich died in 1950. Born into a wealthy middle-class family in Lübeck, Heinrich was one of the leading representatives of Weimar culture. Nelly was twenty-seven years younger, the adopted daughter of a fisherman and a hostess in a Berlin bar. As far as Heinrichs family was concerned, she was from the wrong side of the tracks. In House of Exile, Heinrich and Nellys story is crossed with others from their circle of friends, relatives, and contemporaries: Heinrichs brother, Thomas Mann; his sister, Carla; their friends Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, and Joseph Roth; and, beyond them, the writers James Joyce, Franz Kafka, and Virginia Woolf, among others. Evelyn Juers brings this generation of exiles to life with tremendous poignancy and imaginative power. In train compartments, ship cabins, and rented rooms, the Manns clung to what was left to themtheir bodies, their minds, and their booksin a turbulent and self-destructive era.
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About the Author
Evelyn Juers is the copublisher of Giramondo Publishing and HEAT magazine. She has lived in Hamburg, Sydney, London, and Geneva. She has a PhD from the University of Essex, and her essays on art and literature have appeared in publications around the world.
