TWO WOMEN AND A POISONINGAlfred DoeblinText PublishingREVIEWED BY JESSIE NEILSONAlfred Doeblin (1878-1957), a German Jew, doctor and psychiatrist, was also a prolific and varied writer and a major figure in German literary modernism. Another feature which sets it in the German modernist/expressionist tradition is the almost contradictory liveliness of the characters themselves, the two women with their flailing and theatrics like the dramatic personnel of a 1920s expressionist film. Elli's husband, in the end to meet his death by poisoning, stands out as a pure villain. Two Women cannot help but conjure up the German folklore tradition, of the play of dark and light, good and evil and their intermingling. With his unusual authorial hand, Doeblin encourages his reader to watch his characters and make sense of and react to them.

Source: Otago Daily Times May 14, 2021 03:00 UTC