Cahun

“And we’ll smoke together in the garden that overlooks the bay and the fishing boats tied up at the pier. Soon the autumn winds will cast flecks of surf over the lawn. When we rise in the morning, the flower beds will be adorned with scattered seaweed and shells.” Claude Cahun is an artist pseudonym, which partly embraces Lucy Schwob, born in Nantes in 1894 - died in 1954 on the island of Jersey, who was one of the few women in the French surrealist movement. After World War One, she begins an artistic and personal partnership with Suzanne Malherbe, who also becomes a part of the Cahun pseudonym. Kristina Stoltz’s novel freely invokes the associatively creative and playful Cahun’s life as an artist and female resistance figure, up to and during World War Two. Cahun is a novel about love, transformation, identity and political resistance. A curious story of fate that embraces a century of wars, conflicts and artistic experimentation - with the devil and the author herself as felt presences between the lines.

About the author 

Kristina Stoltz (b. 1975 in Copenhagen) is a unique and self renewing author from book to book. However, she often writes herself into international literary movements: the autobiographical in As if; the politically engaged depiction of conditions for refugees in Donkey; the boundary pushing erotica of A Body, and currently the “exo-biographical“: the fictional portrayal of a real historical figure, in the novel Cahun. Kristina Stoltz continues to receive wide acclaim by dint of her artistic quality and fiece integrity. She has deservedly gained a committed audience and no little international interest.

Text translated by Paul Larkin