My Heart A Novel of Love

Set around the Café des Westens, the epicenter of early 20th-century Expressionist Berlin, Else Lasker-Schüler chronicles the decline of her marriage in a series of letters to her husband Herwarth Walden, publisher of the avant-garde journal Der Sturm. Assuming the guise of alter egos such as Tino of Baghdad and the Prince of Thebes the author weaves a web of Oriental fantasies to inform her husband of her infidelities. In so doing, she transforms a personal crisis into a metaphor for the end of an era. Starring a host of leading artists, including Karl Kraus, Alfred Döblin, Oskar Kokoschka, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Emil Nolde and Arnold Schönberg, My Heart offers an unforgettable insider’s glimpse into one of Berlin’s most artistically vibrant and fascinating periods. Else Lasker-Schüler (1869-1945) ranks among Germany’s greatest 20th-century authors. A poet, playwright and prose-stylist, Lasker-Schüler was the leading female proponent of the Expressionist movement which dominated German art and literature in the decade before WWI. She was also famous for her Bohemian lifestyle and unconventional appearance. In 1932, shortly before she fled the country following the Nazis’ rise to power, she was awarded the prestigious Kleist prize. After periods in Switzerland, Egypt and Palestine, she settled in Jerusalem, where she lived until her death in 1945. This translation by Sheldon Gilman and Robert Levine - the first English-language edition of this seminal work of German Expressionism to appear to date - includes an introduction by Professor Jakob Hessing of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a glossary of relevant names and places.