The Truth About Lou: A Novel After Salom

(Paperback)

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From the shadows of the correspondences and the contradictions of biography, the elusive Salome emerges in this boldly revealing fiction to tell her own story through the three major relationships of her life: at twenty-one she meets the smitten philosopher Nietzsche; at thirty-six she takes the fledgling poet Rilke as her first lover; and at fifty she wins the deep affection of Freud. Who was she really, Lou Salome Willful, conniving girl, controlling femme fatale, or nurturing literary muse Drawing on neglected historical sources and deftly weaving in the presentday character Anna Kane in pursuit of Lou, von der Lippe layers what is known about Salome with what can only be imagined. This is a story of love's epiphanies and pain, a lost child, and the redemptive power of words.

Reviews

"Only someone profoundly gifted both as a novelist and as a literary critic could have given us this persuasive narrative . . . [This novel] evokes, with vivid force, the cultural world forever destroyed by Hitler." -- Harold Bloom
"This is an alternative history, and also an alternative fiction, told with style, bravura, grace, depth and power." -- Colum McCann

Author Bio

Angela von der Lippe has a doctorate in German literature from Brown University, and is the editor and translator of You Alone Are Real to Me by Lou Andreas-Salome. A senior editor at W.W. Norton, she lives in New York City.