Eva Figes (; 15 April 1932 – 28 August 2012) was an English

author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

and feminist. Figes wrote novels,

literary criticism Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Th ...

, studies of

feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

, and vivid memoirs relating to her

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

childhood and later experiences as a

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

refugee A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.

from Hitler's Germany.

Early life and education

Born Eva Unger in Berlin in 1932 to an affluent, secular Jewish family, she arrived in Britain as a refugee in 1939 with her mother Irma Unger, and her younger brother, Ernst. During

Kristallnacht () or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (german: Novemberpogrome, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) paramilitary and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from ...

in November 1938, her father Emil was arrested and sent to

Dachau concentration camp , , commandant = List of commandants , known for = , location = Upper Bavaria, Southern Germany , built by = Germany , operated by = ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) , original use = Political prison , construction ...

. He was later released after his wife offered the Nazis a large bribe and managed to escape to England to join his family in London. At least three of Figes's grandparents on both sides of the family died in concentration camps. Towards the end of the

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, Figes recalled in ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...

'' in 1979, "my mother gave me nine pence and sent me off to the local cinema ... I sat alone in the dark and watched the newsreel of Belsen". It gave her nightmares for many years. She graduated with a

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

with honours from

Queen Mary College Queen Mary University of London (QMUL, or informally QM, and previously Queen Mary and Westfield College) is a public university, public research university in Mile End, East London, England. It is a member institution of the federal University of ...

in London in 1953.

Career

She married John George Figes on 10 July 1954. The couple had two children: the writer

Kate Figes Kate Figes ( born Catherine-Jane Figes; 6 November 1957 – 7 December 2019) was an English author and journalist. Early life and background Kate Figes was the daughter of the feminist writer Eva (née Unger) and John George Figes. Her brother is ...

(1957–2019), and the historian

Orlando Figes Orlando Guy Figes () is a British historian and writer. Until his retirement, he was Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London. Figes is known for his works on Russian history, such as '' A People's Tragedy'' (1996), ''Nata ...

. The marriage was dissolved by divorce in 1962. She met the German author

Günter Grass Günter Wilhelm Grass (born Graß; ; 16 October 1927 – 13 April 2015) was a German novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor, and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in the Free City of Da ...

in London and the two had a short romantic affair that turned into a lifelong friendship. In the 1960s, she was associated with an informal group of experimental British writers influenced by

Rayner Heppenstall John Rayner Heppenstall (27 July 1911 in Lockwood, Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England – 23 May 1981 in Deal, Kent, England) was a British novelist, poet, diarist, and a BBC radio producer.John Wakeman, ''World Authors 1950-1970 : a companion volu ...

that included Stefan Themerson,

Ann Quin Ann Quin (17 March 1936 – 27 August 1973) was a British writer noted for her experimental style. The author of ''Berg'' (1964), ''Three'' (1966), ''Passages'' (1969) and ''Tripticks'' (1972), she died by drowning in 1973 at the age of 37. Life ...

, Alan Burns, and its informal leader,

B. S. Johnson Bryan Stanley William Johnson (5 February 1933 – 13 November 1973) was an English experimental novelist, poet and literary critic. He also produced television programmes and made films. Early life Johnson was born into a working-class family, ...

. Unger worked in publishing until 1967, when she became a full-time writer. Figes's best known work is ''Patriarchal Attitudes'', a feminist polemic written in 1970, published one month before

Germaine Greer Germaine Greer (; born 29 January 1939) is an Australian writer and public intellectual, regarded as one of the major voices of the radical feminist movement in the latter half of the 20th century. Specializing in English and women's literatu ...

's ''

The Female Eunuch ''The Female Eunuch'' is a 1970 book by Germaine Greer that became an international bestseller and an important text in the feminist movement. Greer's thesis is that the "traditional" suburban, consumerist, nuclear family represses women sexual ...

''. The book argued that nurture rather than nature has shaped all secondary sex characteristics and considered why prominent female figures of the nineteenth century were ambivalent or hostile towards the feminist movement. Figes' novel, ''Light'' (1983), is an impressionistic portrait of a single day in the life of

Claude Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...

from sunrise to sunset.

Awards

Figes won the

Guardian Fiction Prize The Guardian Fiction Prize was a literary award sponsored by ''The Guardian'' newspaper. Founded in 1965, it recognized one fiction book per year written by a British or Commonwealth writer and published in the United Kingdom. The award ran for 33 ...

for ''Winter Journey'' in 1967.

Legacy

Figes' archive was acquired by the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...

in 2009 consisting of 186 files of drafts and working papers relating to her literary works, as well as correspondence and personal papers.Eva Figes Archive
archives and manuscripts catalogue, the British Library, Retrieved 7 May 2020.

Selected bibliography

Fiction

*''Equinox'' (1966) *''Winter Journey'' (1967) *''Konek Landing'' (1969) *''B'' (1972) *''Days'' (1974) *''Nelly's Version'' (1977) *''Waking'' (1981) *''Light'' (1983) *''The Seven Ages: A Novel'' (1986) *''Ghosts'' (1988) *''The Tree of Knowledge'' (1990) *''The Tenancy'' (1993) *''The Knot'' (1996)

Literary and social criticism

* ''Patriarchal Attitudes: Women in Society'' (1970) * ''Tragedy and Social Evolution'' (1976) * ''Sex and Subterfuge: Women Writers to 1850'' (1982) * ''Women's Letters in Wartime, 1450-1945'' (1993)

Memoirs

* ''Little Eden: A Child at War'' (1978) * ''Tales of Innocence and Experience: An Exploration'' (2004) * ''Journey to Nowhere'' (2008)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Figes, Eva 1932 births 2012 deaths Alumni of Queen Mary University of London English feminists English women novelists Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom Modernist women writers 20th-century English novelists 20th-century English women writers