"A captivating biographical novel... with
Mrs. Lowe-Porter
, Jo Salas has achieved the writing triumph that her never-met but vividly imagined grandmother-in-law hoped to write...a magnificent literary achievement." --
BookTrib
A fascinating reimagining of the overlooked, complicated life of Thomas Mann's translator, Helen Lowe-Porter
The literary giant Thomas Mann balked at a female translator, but he might well owe his standing in the Western canon to a little-known American woman, Helen Lowe-Porter. Based closely on historical source material, Jo Salas's novel
sympathetically reveals a brilliant woman's struggle to be appreciated as a translator and find her voice in a male-dominated culture. Married to the charming classicist Elias Lowe, whom she met and fell in love with while in Munich, the story weaves one woman's journey as her husband Elias's career soars and her translation work earns Mann the Nobel Prize. The novel celebrates Helen Lowe-Porter as she learns to risk stepping out from the long shadow of the dominating men of her life to become a person of letters in her own right.