After Midnight

IRMGARD KEUN (1905–1982) was born in Berlin and raised in Cologne, where she studied to be an actress. However, reputedly inspired by a meeting with Alfred Döblin, author of Berlin Alexanderplatz, she turned to writing, and became an instant sensation with her first novel, Gigli: One of Us, published in 1931 when she was just twenty-six. A year later, her second novel, The Artificial Silk Girl, was an even bigger bestseller. The rising Nazi party censured Keun, however, and her books were included in the infamous “burning of the books” in 1933. After being arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo, Keun left her husband and escaped Germany. While wandering in exile, Keun conducted an eighteen-month affair with the writer Joseph Roth and finished After Midnight, published in 1937. In 1940 Keun staged her suicide and, under a false identity, re-entered Germany, where she lived in hiding until the end of the war. Her work was rediscovered in the late seventies, reviving her reputation in Germany. She died in 1982. ANTHEA BELL has translated numerous works from French, German, Danish, and Polish. She is best known for her translations of the French Asterix comics with co-translator Derek Hockridge; and for her translation of W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz, for which she was awarded the 2002 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize. GEOFF WILKES, a Lecturer in German Studies at the University of Queensland, has written extensively on the literature and society of the Weimar Republic and the Nazi Reich, with special attention to Irmgard Keun and Hans Fallada. He is the author of Hans Fallada’s Crisis Novels 1931–1947.