Stephanie Zweig has died.
Stephanie Zweig, the German-Jewish Swahili and English speaking author of "Nowhere in Africa" has died.
Her novel, which is a semi-autobiographical account of her family life after Jewish father, a lawyer who was fired from his judgeship by the Nazis when they took power, helped get the family out of Germany, emigrating to British ruled Kenya, where he worked as a farm laborer until joining the British army during World War II.
As a love story, about how hard her father struggled to make his aristocratic willfully blind wife understand the realities of the world in which they lived, it's an inspiring work, and as a tale of translating culture, it is also quite transcendent.
In 1947, despite the loss of most of their family in the holocaust, Ms Zweig's father moved the family back to Germany, to work at the rebuilding of the country's shattered legal system, and Ms Zweig, who had begun to consider herself an English speaking Kenyan, found herself, at the age of 15, a foreigner in her own country all over again.
The novel was made into a film in 2003, and the script is in German, English and Swahili.
Ms. Zweig collaborated on the writing of the movie of the script, and I highly recommend the film, which is a powerful and moving account of vision and blindness.
RIP Ms. Zweig. She was 81, a wonderful woman with a very unique story to tell and a surprisingly intact sense of humor.
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