I first heard about Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter (1876 – 1963) when I fell in love with her grandson, a visiting American graduate student at my university in New Zealand.

I knew of the great German novelist Thomas Mann but had not read his novels, and certainly had never wondered about how they came to appear in English.

“My grandmother was Mann’s translator,” my new boyfriend informed me. I was mildly impressed. He told me a little about her: how forbiddingly intellectual she was, how un-grandmotherly.

I could not have imagined that decades later I’d be inspired to write a novel based on this woman’s fascinating, complicated life. That I’d get to know her, and love her, through her writings.

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Mrs. Lowe-Porter by Jo Salas (JackLeg Press, Feb. 1, 2024)
is available on Bookshop.org*, Amazon*, and wherever books are sold
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Patricia, the mother of my then-boyfriend (now husband), who soon became my mother-in-law, always spoke with mixed awe and resentment of her illustrious mother, though adoringly of her illustrious father, a renowned paleographer.

I learned more when in her seventies Patricia set out to write a biography of both her parents. Helen’s achievement was extraordinary. Between 1924 and 1960 she translated twenty-two of Mann’s novels and nonfiction works, under contract to Knopf as his sole translator. Mann had been widely read and celebrated in Germany but was barely known to English-language readers.

Helen’s first translation, Buddenbrooks, brought Mann instant acclaim and a place in the pantheon. Read More→