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In Film and Fate: Camera Flashes Illuminating a Life, Ilse Aichinger describes
her past and her present largely from the viewpoint of her abiding
passion for the cinema, and for still photography. She reflects on her life by
discussing directors ranging from Luchino Visconti to Leni Riefenstahl, actors
ranging from Orson Welles to Stan Laurel, and photographs by Bill Brandt depicting
subjects as diverse as the Bront‰s´ Haworth Parsonage and London´s
East End. Though Aichinger´s recollections are detailed, intriguing and vivid,
they are pervaded by her sense of the contingency and fragility of existence
- of how the presence of pictures and people in her life presages their disappearance,
and of how "memory shatters easily when you try to master it."

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The translator: Geoff Wilkes is a Senior Lecturer in German Studies at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. His previous translations include Irmgard Keun´s Gilgi, One of Us and some short pieces by Hans Fallada.

Ilse Aichinger (1921-2016) was an Austrian writer and an important representative of the German-speaking post-war literature. She wrote short stories, poems and radio plays. Many national and international prizes, i.a. Nelly-Sachs-Preis (1971), Petrarca-Preis (1982), Franz-Kafka-Preis (1983), Großer Österreichischer Staatspreis für Literatur (1995).

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