My Life is like a Fairy Tale

This is the story of Sonja Heda and her rise from humble beginnings as a waitress in Holland to walk-on appearances in such famous German films of the Weimar and Nazi eras as The Blue Angel, The Gypsy Baron, Jew Süss, Habanera, Munchausen and, eventually, the starring role in the Nazi screwball comedy Bagdad Capers. Joseph and Magda Goebbels, Hans Albers, Eva Braun, Lillian Harvey, Albert Speer, Marika Rökk since she knew them all, it was inevitable that she should think of writing her autobiography. Though she does not get very far with it, she does pass idle moments composing the reviews she hopes to get for My Life Is like a Fairy Tale: Sonja Heda's stunning autobiography left this reviewer feeling that life is so unfair, for not only can she act and dance, but she can write and how she can write! . . . At last the book that takes the lid off the steamy world of German film-making . . . An insightful portrait of the Nazi elite by the beautiful woman who was at its centre. But this fairy story, a narrative of diminishing options and the advance to death and destruction, is very dark indeed and perhaps that is the nature of both fairy tale and supremacist ideology.



Robert Irwin (born 1946) is a novelist, historian, critic and scholar. He is a fellow of The Royal Society of Literature. He is the author of seven previous novels: The Arabian Nightmare (1983), The Limits of Vision (1986), The Mysteries of Algiers (1988), Exquisite Corpse (1995), Prayer-Cushions of the Flesh (1997), Satan Wants Me (1999) and Wonders Will Never Cease (2016).