Product details
- ISBN 9781785127083
- Weight: 500g
- Dimensions: 165 x 243mm
- Publication Date: 07 Aug 2025
- Publisher: Bonnier Books Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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A profoundly moving celebration of love under the darkest of circumstances from the author of The Nine
From the moment they met in 1940 in Ravensbrück concentration camp, Milena Jesenska and Margarete Buber-Neumann were inseparable.
Czech Milena was Kafka's first translator and epistolary lover, and a journalist opposed to fascism. A non-conformist, bi-sexual feminist, she was way ahead of her time. With the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, her home became a central meeting place for Jewish refugees.
German Margarete, born to a middle-class family, married the son of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. But soon swept up in the fervor of the Bolshevik Revolution, she met her second partner, the Communist Heinz Neumann. Called to Moscow for his "political deviations," he fell victim to Stalin's purges while Margarete was exiled to the hell of the Soviet gulag. Two years later, traded by Stalin to Hitler, she ended up outside Berlin in Ravensbrück, the only concentration camp built for women.
Milena and Margarete loved each other at the risk of their lives. But in the post-war survivors' accounts, lesbians were stigmatized, and survivors kept silent. This book explores those silences, and finally celebrates two strong women who never gave up and continue to inspire. As Margaret wrote: "I was thankful for having been sent to Ravensbrück, because it was there I met Milena."
Gwen Strauss is the author of The Nine, The Night Shimmy, Ruth and the Green Book and a collection of poetry, Trail of Stones. Her poems, short stories, and essays have appeared in numerous journals, including The New Republic,
Catapult, The Jewish Chronicle, New England Review, and The Kenyon Review. She was born and spent her early years in Haiti.
Strauss lives in southern France, where she is the executive director of the Dora Maar Cultural Center.
