The Girl With The Leica – By Helena Janeczek

STREGA Prize Winner

Gerda Taro was a German-Jewish war photographer, anti-fascist activist, artist and innovator who, together with her partner, the Hungarian Endre Friedmann, was one half of the alias Robert Capa, widely considered to be the twentieth century’s greatest war and political photographer. She was killed while documenting the Spanish Civil War and tragically became the first female photojournalist to be killed on a battlefield.

Gerda Taro is at the heart of this kaleidoscopic novel but another of its main characters is the era itself, the 1930s, with economic depression, the rise of Nazism, hostility towards refugees in France, the century’s ideological warfare, the cultural ferment, and the ascendency of photography as the age’s quintessential art form.

The Girl with the Leica is a must-read for fans of historical fiction centered on extraordinary women’s lives. – Europa Editions

Have you ever heard of the photographer Gerda Taro? You may know her as Robert Capa‘s girlfriend and muse, and I’m sure you have heard of Capa at least once. Well, Helena Janeczek in her book The Girl with the Leica, digs deep into Taro’s story showing it for what it really is: a modern feminist hero’s story. – Arianna Richetti, Daily Art Magazine

Janeczek creatively and seamlessly spotlights war photographer Gerda Pohorylle… from the viewpoint of the friends who knew her best. – Publisher’s Weekly

Paperback. 304pp. 5.25×8.25in.  Europa Editions

$ 18.00