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Popular Culture Review
1999); High Gloss Broads (Hochglanzweiber, 2001); and her most recent, The
Champagne Diet (Die Champagner-Diat, 2006) have sold millions of copies in
the last 15 years,7 and Hera Lind is certainly one of if not the best-known female
author in Germany today. Are her novels indeed “mocking, satirical books” (14)
or “rebellious novels” (15)8 and therefore worthy of our respect as implied by
Jngeborg Mues, founder and editor of the Fischer series, or are they best
described as “sparkling wine-prose”9 by critic Allmeier (LI2), “lightweight
babbling” by columnist Ohland 27,10 and by Lind herself as “light fare” (MDR
Interview)? 11 And if Lind herself never reads “books of the type [she] writes,
because that would be wasted time for her,”12 as she confided to Angelika
Ohland in an interview with Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt (28), why
should anybody else?
In Germany, at least, anecdotal evidence suggests that the majority of books
are bought by women.13 Since wom