At the end of what is (she cannot help observing) an extraordinary life, Elisabeth Rother has decided to write her memoirs. She brushes aside her narrow escape with her Jewish husband from the Nazis, and the perilous voyage to the New World of New Jersey. The subject that really consumes her is the waywardness of her impossible daughter, Renate, and her granddaughter, Irene. Renate performs autopsies on the bodies of politicians whom death has harvested in the nighttime arms of their mistresses. Worse, she sleeps on unironed sheets. Irene drops out of school to roam the world, refuses to correct her nose with plastic surgery, and shows alarming signs of enjoying sex. What is to be done with such women? A curiously touching love letter to the difficult but sustaining love of mothers and daughters, The Empress of Weehawken is a masterpiece of comedy with an unexpected lilt of redemption at its close.
Author
Irene Dische is an American writer, born and raised in the Washington Heights district of New York City. She has studied Literature and Anthropology on the Harvard University. She was a freelance journalist (The New Yorker, The Nation). In the early 1980s, Dische moved to Berlin, Germany, and now she devides her time between Berlin and Rhinebeck, New York. A lot of her work is written in English, but often first published in German. Irene Dische ist eine Amerikanisch, geboren und aufgewachsen in Washington Heights, New York City. Sie hat Literatur und Anthropologie studiert an der Harvard University . Sie war freelance journalistin (The New Yorker, The Nation). In den frühen 1980er Jahren zog sie nach Berlin, Deutschland, und jetzt lebt sie abwechselnd in Berlin und in Rhinebeck, New York. Viele ihrer Werke sind in englischer Sprache verfasst, aber zuerst in deutscher Sprache herausgegeben.
