Noémi Lefebvre's work delves into the intricate intersection of the personal and the political. Her novels explore how individual identity is shaped by societal and historical forces. Through a sharp, insightful style, she uncovers the complexities of adult relationships and self-perception. Her writing offers a provocative examination of how personal destinies are interwoven with broader political and cultural contexts.
In this new novel by the acclaimed author of Blue Self-Portrait, a poet- narrator existing on a diet of cannabis, bananas and books on oppression under the Third Reich muddles through a national state of emergency. Their ten lessons to today's young poets form a blistering treatise on survival skills for the wilfully idle.
A contemporary novel of angst and high farce, Blue Self-Portrait unfolds among Berlin's cultural institutions but is more truly located in the mid-air flux between contrary impulses to remember and to ignore. Noemi Lefebvre shows how music continues to work on and through us, addressing past trauma while reaching for possible futures.