In Rome one January afternoon in 1943, a young German woman is on her way to listen to a Bach concert at the Lutheran church. The war is for her little more than a daydream, until she realizes that her husband might never return. Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman, winner of the prestigious Georg Büchner prize, is a mesmerizing psychological portrait of the human need to safeguard innocence and integrity at any cost—even at the risk of excluding reality. More than just the story of this single woman, it is a compelling and credible description of a typical young German woman during the Nazi era.
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Technically this book is one sentence, visually broken up into paragraphs. A meditation on denial, naivety, and longing over the course of an afternoon as a young pregnant woman walks through Rome during WWII. Very affecting, very short, so spend more time with the words - it is worth it.
