Leselampe

von Laksmi Pamuntjak
Schriftstellerin, die derzeit ihre Zeit zwischen Berlin und Jakarta aufteilt. Ihr vielbeachteter Roman "Amba" (in dt. Übersetzung "Alle Farben Rot", Ullstein Verlag 2015) behandelt die Pogrome gegen Linke und Chinesen unter Präsident Suharto im Jahr 1965.

Henry James
Bildnis einer Dame
Roman; Aus dem amerikanischen Englisch von Gottfried Röckelein, dtv 2015 (Erstveröffentlichung 1880/81, Atlantic Monthly)

To say one loves a novel because it best illuminates one's own life carries certain risks, but this is precisely why "The Portrait of a Lady" is the most important novel in my life — and one I always return to. The life of Isabel Archer, its intelligent, impressionable heroine, is a devastating study of how a woman’s quest for freedom and independence paradoxically leads her to a life of imprisonment. Equally unsettling is the premise that her error of judgment is the result of an imagination too richly steeped in novels — a double irony for a heroine trapped inside a novel. It also contains some of the most beautiful passages in literature, the liveliest portrayal of a woman’s complex mind, and characters that live in memory.