Almost forty years ago, Alice Walker's novel "The Color Purple" was published in the United States.
This began the triumphant advance of a story about black women in the American South, about abuse, violence and machismo.
The author became the first black woman ever to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Literature.
Steven Spielberg's 1985 film adaptation, which starred a completely unknown Whoopi Goldberg, brought the themes of the novel into the mainstream and doused them with the syrup of melodrama.
Paul Ingendaay
Europe correspondent for the feature pages in Berlin.
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That didn't change the fact that “The Color Purple” remained an enormously important piece of literature, passed on, reinterpreted and exposed to the current debates about racism, civil rights and cultural identity.
On the occasion of a new German translation of the novel by Ecco Verlag, I spoke to Alice Walker, who is now 78 years old, and asked her about the meaning and afterlife of her classic.
Now we know: There is not only the film for the book or the musical for the book, but soon there will even be a film adaptation of the musical.
Alice Walker: "The Color Purple". Novel. From the American by Cornelia Holfelder-von der Tann. Ecco Verlag, 320 pages, 20 euros.
To Steven Spielberg's film adaptation:
The Making of "The Color Purple".
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