Sunset at Noon: The Story of a Career

Philadelphia/London: J.B. Lippincott Company. Near Fine in Very Good+ dj. (c.1937). First American Edition. Hardcover. [nice clean copy, very slight bumping to a couple of corners; the jacket is lightly scuffed on the front panel, with a bit of wear at edges and spine ends, two small chips at the bottom corners of the rear panel, and a little stain along the left edge of the rear panel]. The third novel by this German novelist and songwriter. Set in Vienna "during those unbalanced years after the [First World] War," its protagonist is a woman with "ambition, intelligence and talent," who sets out to "climb the ladder to fame, without money or other assistance." She makes a success as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter, at one point writing a book that argues for women's equality and independence, but which is mistakenly perceived by the public as a brilliant satire. Her feminist beliefs also complicate her relationships with men -- particularly when she meets a professor, who is a critic of her work (and also has "contempt for 'independent' women"), but also pursues her romantically. The Jewish author, whose songs gave her an entree into the cabaret world of Weimar Germany, fled Germany for London when the Nazis came to power in 1933; her father, a well-known actor and singer, relocated to Vienna, but eventually was imprisoned, and died in Auschwitz. After the war, Ruth settled in Switzerland, where she worked as an lecturer and a translator of crime novels, in addition to continuing her own writing, and where was was married, in 1953, to another well-known German writer and screenwriter, Louis de Wohl. .