AUTHOR CAROLINE HELLER DISCUSSES MEMOIR OF PRE AND POST CZECHSLOVAKIA

USPA NEWS - Author Caroline Heller will discuss her memoir "Reading Claudius" at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 8 in Dining Room A, located on the sixth floor of the Library of Congress James Madison Building at 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C.

Author Caroline Heller Discusses Memoir of Pre- and Post-War Czechoslovakia Author Caroline Heller will discuss her memoir "Reading Claudius" at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 8 in Dining Room A, located on the sixth floor of the Library of Congress James Madison Building at 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. The program is sponsored jointly by the Library´s European Division and the Hebrew Language Table in cooperation with the Embassy of the Czech Republic. The program is free and open to the public; tickets are not required.------------------------------ "Reading Claudius: A Memoir in Two Parts" (Random House, 2015) traces Heller´s life as well as the lives of her parents, her uncle and their circle of intellectuals from Central Europe from the eve of World War II to present-day America. The author evokes pre-war Prague, where her parents lived, loved and studied. Her mother, Liese Florsheim, was a young German refugee who befriended two brothers. As Hitler´s power spread and World War II broke out, their world was destroyed and they had to flee the continent. One of the brothers, who eventually became the author´s father, was sent to a concentration camp. He survived and reunited with Liese in the United States, where they married and raised a family. Their daughter, who carries the trauma of her parents´ lives with her, tells her story and theirs in her two-part memoir. Heller is the director of the interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in educational studies at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she is also a professor in the graduate school of education. Heller earned a bachelor´s degree from the University of Chicago, a master of fine arts degree from Bennington College and a doctorate in education at the University of California at Berkeley.