Maria Lazar

Born in Vienna on November 22, 1895, Maria Lazar was an Austrian writer, journalist, translator, and dramatist. Several reliable sources agree that she later lived in exile in Scandinavia and died in Stockholm on March 30, 1948.

Her writing is often described as socially incisive and strongly anti-fascist, and she also published under the pseudonym Esther Grenen. Although she was active and respected in the interwar years, her work slipped from view for decades before a recent revival brought new attention to her fiction and plays.

That combination of literary skill, political urgency, and a life shaped by displacement gives her work much of its lasting force. She is now often introduced as an important rediscovered voice in twentieth-century Austrian literature.