Lyric novella - Annemarie Schwarzenbach

Annemarie Schwarzenbach-journalist, novelist, antifascist,
archaeologist, and traveler-has become a European cult figure for
bohemian free spirits since the rediscovery of her works in the late
1980s. Lyric Novella is her story of a young man's obsession with
a Berlin varit actress. Despite having his future career mapped out
for him in the diplomatic service, the young man begins to question all
his family values under Sibylle's spell. His family, future, and social
standing become irrelevant when set against his overriding compulsion to
pick her up every night from the theater so they can go for a drive.

Schwarzenbach's clear, psychologically acute prose makes this
novella an evocative narrative, with many intriguing parallels to her
own life. In fact, she admitted after publication that her hero was in
fact a young woman, not a man, leaving little doubt that Lyric Novella is a literary tale of lesbian love during socially and politically turbulent times.

"The subject of Annemarie Schwarzenbach's story is not failed love-
Sibylle's apparent emotional coldness-but the failure of love-the
protagonist's helpless inability, in the crucial moment, to accept his
human responsibility toward the beloved."- Neue Zrcher Zeitung

"The work bears the face of its time, but it is so gentle, silent
and veiled that one can barely exclude the person behind the mask.A
mask is in fact this face, because the hero is a heroine who does not
want to be seen."-Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung