The Girl with the Leica: Based on the true story of the woman behind the name Robert Capa

The Girl with the Leica tells the life of Gerda Taro, a German-Jewish war photographer, anti-fascist activist, and innovator, through the perspectives of three of her friends. Together with her partner Endre Friedmann, a Hungarian, Taro was one half of the alias Robert Capa, widely considered the twentieth century's greatest war and political photographer. She was killed while documenting the Spanish Civil War and became the first female photojournalist to die on a battlefield. On August 1, 1937—Taro's twenty-seventh birthday—her funeral takes place in Paris. Friedmann leads the procession alongside Ruth Cerf, her old friend from Leipzig; Willy Chardack, an ex-lover; and Georg Kuritzkes, another lover and International Brigades figure. Each knew a different Gerda, sometimes at odds with the heroic anti-fascist figure being mourned publicly. The novel also captures the 1930s as a character in itself: economic depression, the rise of Nazism, hostility toward refugees in France, ideological conflict, cultural ferment, and photography's emergence as the era's defining art form. Winner of the Strega Prize.