Rebel Angel

The Life and Times of Annemarie Schwarzenbach

Rooney, Padraig

1. Edition February 2025
352 Pages, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd

ISBN: 978-1-5095-6629-7

John Wiley & Sons

Further versions

Annemarie Schwarzenbach was one of the twentieth century's most remarkable women, possibly the greatest sexual and political radical of the 1930s. But until now she's been largely ignored.

Born to a wealthy family in Switzerland, as a teenager she rebelled against her domineering pro-Nazi mother. She immersed herself in the antifascist, queer and artistic circles of the German diaspora of the 1930s. Her edgy glamour and androgynous beauty turned heads in the lesbian nightclubs of Weimar Berlin, on the ski slopes of St. Moritz, and in New York's luxury hotels and jazz bars.

Constantly on the move, Annemarie chronicled the low and dishonest decade leading to war through her unique journalism, writing and photography. Her work was as adventurous and uncompromising as her personal life, and reveals a deep courage, intelligence, and ambition tragically curtailed by her untimely death.

Introduction

1. Cocoon
2. Women on the Left Bank
3. Breaking the Threads
4. Closet of Selves
5. Pilgrim Soul
6. Lavender Marriages
7. Two Women, a Ford and a Rolleiflex
8. Enemies of Promise
9. Running on Empty
10. Heart of Darkness

Epilogue

"At last a biography in English of one of the most interesting women of the twentieth century! Schwarzenbach was so far ahead of her time that we are only now beginning to catch up to her. Little happened in the early decades of the twentieth century to which she didn't have a connection. What a life! And what a great way Padraig Rooney has told it."
Carlos Dews, editor of The Collected Works of Carson McCullers

"Rebel Angel gives us the extraordinary story of an extraordinary woman. Padraig Rooney is a born storyteller who charts the short but dramatic life of the beautiful, talented and troubled Swiss-born writer who, much to her wealthy and conservative family's dismay, set herself in instinctive opposition to the rise of fascism across Europe, moved in the circles of Weimar figures like Klaus and Erika Mann, and explored regions of the world little known to white Europeans. She showed tremendous literary promise and embarked on documenting a life of adventure, travel and erotic passion. Known in the English-speaking world primarily as a shadowy figure in feminist and lesbian history, Schwarzenbach was until now nearly lost to legend; Rooney reanimates this fascinating, multi-talented figure, who annoyed and inspired in equal measure."
Mary V. Dearborn, author of Carson McCullers: A Life

"An empathetic portrait of an audacious woman."
Kirkus Reviews

"impressive"
The Times Literary Supplement

Padraig Rooney is an acclaimed Irish poet and author.