Customer Reviews

Arriving Where We Started

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A fascinating autobiography of an American Jewish woman coming to age in post-WWII New York and Europe, this book has much in common with a female novel of development. Probst Solomon portrays with striking honesty and intimacy the personal twists and turns that bring her from the "linguistic bouillabaise"of her educated New York home with its German nanny, through the perils of adolescent loves, to her political adventures in post-war Europe and the sudden deaths of her husband and Spanish lover. An American journalist, who wrote in Spanish for "Península" magazine, which was to provide the intellectual base for Spanish exiles of the Franco regime, Probst Solomons work is infused with erudition, "intelligent rebellion" and idealism. With the help of Norman Mailers sister, the young Probst Solomon helps spring dissidents from Spanish jails. From her home among the exiles in Paris, she travels to Munich and Dachau at the end of 1948, where she has unsettling encounters with a Jewish survivor in the black market and with occupying American troops. She returns to New York, politically mature beyond her years, at the age of 21.