At last someone (Penguin) is bringing The Artificial Silk Girl (Das kunstseiden Mädchen) by Irmgard Keun back into print, and I for one couldn't be more delighted. I'm sure I have suggested it hither and yon, especially to publishers of 'forgotten women's fiction', all to no avail down the years.
I first read the book in 2006 having acquired this exquisite hardback edition and wrote this about it...
.'...but here at last is Irmgard Keun's The Artificial Silk Girl, she who lived for some time in exile with Joseph Roth.
Born in Berlin in 1905, Irmgard Keun's second novel was published in 1932 and became an instant best seller. Her writing was banned in 1933 and all remaining copies of this book were destroyed.'
I had decided to track down and read some of the authors who had been banned or exiled and this was how I stumbled across Irmgard Keun's writing and this astonishing book.
Fleeing Germany in 1936 and joining a circle of exiles that included Joseph Roth with whom she had an affair, 'who is writing the great book about now?' asks Irmgard Keun of her peers. Michael Hofmann argues that whilst in many ways she was right perhaps the 'now' was just too much for the readership to stomach, perhaps they 'craved respite and escape.' Irmgard Keun would eventually return to Germany illegally under the name of Charlotte Tralow thanks to false reports about her death. Who can know the trauma and fear of those years in a writer's life.
Irmgard Keun gives us material girl Doris's view of life in Berlin in the 1920's as Doris attempts to script her life along the lines of a glamorous movie star. Believing that respect comes from glamour not knowledge, and stupidity and dumbness are seen as cute, Doris sets out in the protective pelt of her stolen fur coat to find fame and fortune in the city. It all goes hopelessly wrong in both funny/sad ways as reality hits the beguiling and amazingly perceptive but ultimately dizzy Doris.
'I constantly find myself in situations where I don't know something and I have to pretend that I do...'
Poor Doris. Whilst her innate sense of goodness and innocence shine through, it is unlikely to get her far.
There is plenty of foreshadowing of what was to come and of course none of it could be known by Irmgard Keun in 1931, yet, as with so many writers of the time, she sensed it and noted it. Doris is the original non-political girl caught up in it all and like many others only realising when it was far too late to do anything about it. It could be argued that The Artificial Silk Girl is one of the last accounts of everyday life in Germany before the Nazis came to power, as Kathy von Ankum elaborates in my edition of the book,
'Doris becomes a camera, recording the sights and sounds of city life....but Doris's power of vision, despite its relentless focus on surfaces, ends by penetrating to what lies beneath the surface entertainments.'
My perfectly presented little hardback book, binding, paper quality, dusky power-pink cover, all gorgeous. An American translation, and inevitably a few colloquialisms creep into what is essentially a beautiful mid-European text. A minor detail though, I'm just grateful that Kathie von Ankum has translated a book that had not been available in English since 1933, and that Penguin have republished that translation.
Other books on my shelves by Irmgard Keun include Child of All Nations and After Midnight and as Michael Hofmann suggests...
'Keun has few rivals - I can think of none - as a chronicler of the ambience (in After Midnight, which is set in Frankfurt on the day Hitler comes to town) or the consequences (in Child of All Nations) of the rise of Nazism.'
Whilst Child of All Nations is readily available After Midnight is not, so let's hope Penguin have plans for more by Irmgard Keun, and I have plans for a redux here of my thoughts about both books dreckly.
Meanwhile, welcome back into print Irmgard Keun and if you decide to read The Artificial Silk Girl and meet Doris and her fur coat, please do come back and share your thoughts. I can't wait for you to make her acquaintance. I have craved people to talk to about this book for years...
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