Life goes on  

I keep reading this breathtaking biography, a depiction of an incredible childhood and adolescence, this unsentimental view of a time we cannot imagine today, but have to confront time and again. 
I buy a copy; read it and I am always so deeply troubled by it that I promptly give it away.
This is the reason why there’s always a newly acquired book lying around at my home. 
Just like this one ... which will soon make its journey to the Ruhr Region.
Ruth Klüger’s memoir is disturbingly unusual. Unsentimental, as I said before, and sometimes incomprehensible. Straight-forward, tough and yet also very gripping and touching. 
Anyway… what a woman she is, how emancipated, progressive in her thinking and how full of resentment yet not insulted. 
I unabashedly admire her. 
Wherever she may be these days.
And ... her birthday is on the same day as mine.
A great, liberated, smart, courageous and beautiful SCORPIO!

Michael Maertens, Vienna, 13 March 2021
Acting Der Untergang des Hauses Usher und  Die Toten