Publisher's Synopsis
Memories crystallize into stories, fiction pointing back to an initial trigger: a lived moment, more often an intensely felt impression. The significance of any outside "action" lies in its imprint on the mind. If some of the pieces united in this book can be considered "action-packed," it is not in the sense of the reader's compulsion to learn what "happens" on the next page. It is not about the "smoking gun," only about the smoke and the vibrations it causes in the mind. It is impossible to pigeonhole vibrations, which is why these prose pieces can only be divided into non-categories, tangents to short stories, capriccios, and a personal essay, as they emerge from pen strokes like the brush strokes of impressionists which, together, form a vision-
Perchance a Life.
-Jeanne Perrin, cultural critic, mediator revue Passages, Paris... The book is very good, especially revealing is the last chapter on a childhood under the Nazi flag.
-Cecilia Vicuna, international poet and installation artist Perchance a Life is an exquisite jewel of a book and a rare glimpse into an almost vanished world of a deep, refined, multinational culture that sustained generations of Europeans through war, terrors and cataclysms. There is so much in that short book that bears deep reading, but the memoir of the father, a gifted anti-Nazi photographer trying to survive the nightmare of National Socialism is a startling keyhole not only into Germany in the 1930s and 1940, but also into the world today, again so obviously teetering on the edge of political insanity.
-Perry Brass, author of King of Angels, The Manly Art of Seduction and other books This is not only great entertainment. It is true art.
-Marie-Helene Kourimsky, head of Association pour le Patrimoine Culturel Francais