Born in Munich in a Polish Jewish family, Helena Janeczek has lived in Italy for over thirty years. With The Girl with the Leica she has won the Strega Prize, Italy’s most prestigious literary award, the Bagutta Prize, and was a finalist for the Campiello Prize.
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Helena Janeczek
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A woman basks in the summer light, her head cocked lazily against a chair. Next to her sits a man, a rifle in his hand, his teeth bared in an affectionate grin. This is Barcelona in 1936, and the pair are republican fighters in the Spanish civil war. The picture was taken by...— The Guardian, Nov 23 2019![]()
Winner of the Strega prize, Italy’s equivalent of the Booker, this tantalising biographical novel tells the story of the German-Jewish war photographer Gerda Taro, who died, aged 26, while covering the Spanish Civil War. We see Gerda via the memories of three real-life...— The Daily Mail, Oct 3 2019![]()
I have a chicken/egg fascination with women artists and their more famous male counterparts; I don’t always trust the paternalistic narrative. Fictionalized tellings allow for different “heroes” or at least co-heroes. Reading about the female half of the famed war photography...— LitHub, Oct 3 2019![]()
Janeczek’s Strega-Prize winning novel is based on the life of a pioneering photographer. Gerda Taro, a fashionable young woman, met Andre Friedmann, the “Hungarian with the Leica”, in 1930s Paris, where she joined other German exiles fleeing the Hitler regime. Using the...— BBC Culture, Sep 30 2019![]()
Helen Janeczek and Isabel Allende join an illustrious group of novelists who have found a deep wellspring for fiction in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), beginning with Ernest Hemingway’s eye-witness-inspired For Whom the Bell Tolls, which was published just a year after...— Booklist, Sep 25 2019
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