Helena Janeczek

Helena Janeczek, who was born in Munich to Jewish parents of Polish origin, has been living in Italy since she was 18 years old. She debuted with the collection of poems in German “Ins Freie” (Suhrkamp, 1989), while choosing Italian for her fiction debut: “Lessons of Darkness” (Mondadori, 1997), in which she addresses the issue of memory transmission. History and personal events of those who pass through it are at the heart of “The Girl with the Leica” (Guanda, 2017), a biography of the photojournalist Gerda Taro, killed during the Spanish Civil War. The novel won the Strega, Bagutta and Selezione Campiello awards, and has been translated into several languages. With her latest effort – “The Time of the Unexpected” (Guanda, 2024) – Janeczek returns to the surgical and obsessive investigation of history through the story of the lives it overwhelms.