Erich Hackl
Auroras Anlaß

English Title: Aurora's Motive

›Aurora's Motive‹ ist an electrifying novel of feminism gone mad, based on the true story of Aurora Rodriguez. Born in 1890 into the stifling world of provincial bourgeois Spain, Aurora Rodriguez grew up precocious, virtually self-educated, filled with longings for self-realization and cloudy Nietzschean dreams (gleaned from her father's library) of a world made better by a Superwoman – if not herself, than a daughter. In 1914, after her parents died, she moved to Madrid and gave birth to a daughter, Hildegart, whom she proceeded to raise by herself, with utter devotion and according to her own theories, to be the Valkyrie of the New Era. Hildegart was indeed a prodigy – a thirteen-year-old law student at Madrid‘s Central University, a brilliant socialist activist who led campaigns for sexual freedom and the creation of the Spanish Republic - until, at the age of 17, she fell under the spell of the notoriously seductive H.G. Wells, who invited her to leave Spain. Torn between the superwoman persona her mother had created for her and her own, more worldly desires, Hildegart begged Aurora to rescue her. And so Aurora did...