Ingemaus : La primera vida de Inge Feltrinelli

As a child, Inge Schönthal is called *Ingemaus*—"little mouse." Yet there is nothing diminutive about her. She grows up in Nazi Germany, living in barracks in Göttingen after her father is forced to flee because he is Jewish. She shares her home with her stepfather and her mother, Trudel—a woman who is stubborn, volatile, and extreme. Before long, the regime brands her a foreigner in her own land. The school principal expels her for being of mixed heritage, but Inge knows that Göttingen is not her destination—merely a waystation. She possesses what Yiddish calls *chutzpah*: an irreverent boldness—a blend of daring and insolence—that constantly drives her forward. And so, at barely twenty years old, she hitchhikes to Hamburg. There, she learns photography on the fly and soon moves with ease among editors, journalists, and photographers. She works for the feminist magazine *Constanze*—her passport to the modern world—and immerses herself in the vibrant atmosphere of postwar Hamburg. She soon crosses the Atlantic and makes a name for herself in American photojournalism. She rubs shoulders with Richard Avedon, Erwin Blumenfeld, and John Rawlings. She photographs Greta Garbo, Anna Magnani, Billy Wilder, and Winston Churchill. She travels ceaselessly—to Cuba, Brazil, and Ghana. Yet her greatest scoops are still to come: Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso. Her pursuit of images leads her to discover something more: a way of being in the world. At twenty-eight, her life takes a new turn when she meets Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, the firebrand publisher who releases books that read more like manifestos. Together, they forge a project that evolves into both an intellectual sanctuary and a home; they share a son—and a revolution.