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| TLS October 15 2021 |
In one of his fascinating blog posts about Annemarie Schwarzenbach James J Conway writes that he hopes that the translations of two of her books, All the Roads are Open and Death in Persia will ‘secure a greater profile for Schwarzenbach’s vivid writing and amazing life story among English readers’.
This was also my intention in writing The Buoyancy of the Craft, and hopefully the recent review in the Times Literary Supplement will help to bring new readers for her work. As well as my own book, the review covers the two titles by Schwarzenbach mentioned above, Death in Persia translated by Lucy Renner Jones & All the Roads are Open translated by Isabel Fargo Cole .
Annemarie Schwarzenbach was ‘the most true and honest person I had ever met’ according to Ella Maillart, her travelling companion to Afghanistan.
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| Annemarie & Ella Maillart |
In 1939, Annemarie and Ella undertook the long overland journey from Switzerland to Afghanistan. Their extraordinary adventures resulted in Ella’s The Cruel Way and Annemarie’s All the Roads are Open. But Ella’s patience was sorely tested by Annemarie’s drug addiction, of which, she had assured Ella before they started out, she had successfully been cured. Ella watched, uncomprehending, as Annemarie showed total commitment to her writing and to their shared journey across Europe and Asia, only to suffer a relapse into drug-taking, with all its physical and emotional side-effects.
You can read the rest of my essay about her in the online section of Crannóg magazine, here.
And if you are interested in the ‘strange flowers’ of inter-war Mitteleuropa and Berlin in particular, I highly recommend James J Conway’s blog. You can find a link here to the journeys made by Annemarie and Barbara Wright, in the southern states of the USA in 1937, with some of her photographs.
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| Photo of Barbara Wright in Persia, taken by Annemarie |
And to a piece here on Klaus and Erika Mann, lifelong friends of Annemarie.
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| Annemarie & Klaus Mann |
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