We explore the treasure troves of artists’ libraries. Celebrating books and their writers, editors, publishers, designers and readers, the Artist’s Library is a column about what to read next.
Ever since I read Rivka Galchen’s brilliantly funny but disturbing book Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch (2021), I have been under the spell of Katharina Kepler. Katharina Kepler is one of the most eccentric, loyal, brave and witty great mothers of literature, the leading figure in Galchen’s story about the mother of the famous Johannes Kepler. To protect herself, Katharina Kepler must fight the scalding patriarchy of the seventeenth century, a period in which independent, intelligent women were easily accused of witchcraft.
When I entered Olivia Plender’s studio in Stockholm on a dark afternoon in November, I was introd…
