The Seventh Cross - Brossura

Seghers, Anna

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0349010412 ISBN 13: 9780349010410

Casa editrice: Virago Press Ltd, 2019

Riassunto

A rediscovered German classic novel from 1942, never before published in the UK, The Seventh Cross is both a gripping escape story and a powerful novel of resistance.

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Informazioni sugli autori

ANNA SEGHERS (1900-1983) was born Netty Reiling in Mainz, Germany, into a Jewish family. In 1924 she received a doctorate in Art History from the University of Heidelberg, and in the same year her first story, written under the name Antje Seghers, was published. During this time, she came into contact with many left-wing intellectuals, including her husband, a Hungarian economist, and began writing in earnest. By the end of 1928, Anna Seghers had joined the Communist Party, given birth to two children and was awarded the Kleist Prize for her first novel, The Revolt of the Fishermen of St Barbara.
As Jew, a Communist and a revolutionary writer, she was blacklisted in Nazi Germany and left for France in 1933 with her family. After the Nazi invasion in 1940, she was forced to flee again and, with the aid of Varian Fry, she and her family sailed from Marseilles to Mexico on a ship that included Victor Serge, André Breton and Claude Lévi-Strauss among its passengers.
Seghers gained international recognition with The Seventh Cross (1942), which became a bestseller. It was the basis for the 1944 MGM film starring Spencer Tracy and was one of the only depictions of Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War in either literature or film. It has been translated into more than thirty languages.
After the war Seghers moved to East Berlin, where she became a prominent figure of East German letters, actively championing the work of younger writers from her position as president of the Writers Union. Among Seghers' internationally acclaimed works are The Seventh Cross; Transit (1944); Excursion of the Dead Girls (1945); The Dead Stay Young (1949); and the story collection Benito's Blue (1973).

Margot Bettauer Dembo (1928-2019) has translated works by Judith Hermann, Robert Gernhardt, Joachim Fest, Ödön von Horváth, and Feridun Zaimoglu, among others. She was awarded the Goethe-Institut/Berlin Translator's Prize in 1994 and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize in 2003. Dembo has also worked as a translator for two feature documentary films: The Restless Conscience, which was nominated for an Academy Award, and The Burning Wall.

Rachel Seiffert is one of Virago's most critically acclaimed contemporary novelists. Her first book, The Dark Room, (2001) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and made into the feature film Lore. In 2003, she was named one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists, and in 2011 she received the EM Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Field Study, her collection of short stories published in 2004, received an award from PEN International. Her second novel, Afterwards (2007) third novel The Walk Home (2014), and fourth novel A Boy in Winter (2017), were all longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Her books have been published in eighteen languages.

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INTRODUCED BY RACHEL SEIFFERT

'It was [Seghers] who taught my generation and anyone who had an ear to listen after that not-to-be-forgotten war to distinguish right from wrong. The Seventh Cross shaped me; it sharpened my vision' Gunter Grass

'A fascinating insight into life in pre-war Germany just as the horrors of the Nazi regime were beginning to unfold. An important novel' Simon Mawer


Seven prisoners escape from Westhofen concentration camp. The commandant vows to capture the fugitives within seven days. Six are quickly apprehended and brutally dealt with, but George Heisler slips through his pursuers' fingers. It becomes a matter of pride to track him down, at whatever cost.

Who can George trust? His brother is now an SS officer; his lover turns him away. Hunted, injured and desperate, time is running out, and anyone caught helping him will pay will their life.

First published in 1942, The Seventh Cross is one of the most powerful and influential novels of the twentieth century - a tense thriller that helped to alert the world to the terrifying realities of life in Nazi Germany.

TRANSLATED BY MARGOT BETTAUER BEMBO

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Virago Press Ltd
• Data di pubblicazione: 2019
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0349010412
• ISBN 13: 9780349010410
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 416
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile