An Admirable Woman

Erika Hertz is a Berlin-born Jewish intellectual who, with her art historian husband Martens, fled Nazi Germany for New York. It was Martens’ impressive reputation that won them their sanctuary, but it’s Erika who’s supported them with her journalism. In the years since, she’s cemented her own reputation as a leading culture historian and the fêted author of the internationally-acclaimed tomes The Travail of Freedom, and On Cruelty. 

Inspired by the life story of Hannah Arendt—whose landmark Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) Arthur Cohen published in its first paperback edition—An Admirable Woman won the 1983 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. “A fascinating piece of scholarship in its own right” (Publishers Weekly), it’s a tribute to Arendt and her fellow European thinkers displaced by Fascism, and a celebration of the extraordinary impact they had on American cultural life. 

This new edition, featuring a foreword by Pulitzer Prize winner Joshua Cohen, offers readers an all-too-timely portrait of moral courage in the face of authoritarianism, virulent bigotry, and state-sponsored violence.

“An Admirable Woman is a novel of clarity and valor that explores the inmost lining of intellectual fame. What is discovered there is how a virtuous heart works; how love and mind-fervor work; how an unequal marriage works; how a passionate childhood can be understood; how history is judged; how culture is parsed; and how American civilization is divined by the newcomer of genius. It is, in short, a novel about a purposeful life—wherein the power of a singular mind grows into wisdom and wisdom into heroism. In the creation of the philosopher, Erika Hertz, Arthur A. Cohen’s imagination rises to nobility.” 

—Cynthia Ozick

“Sutble, fertile, profound . . . it confirms an unparalleled literary sensibility.”

—Jerzy Kosiński

“Arthur Cohen has written the 'feminine' version of [Paul Valéry’s] Monsieur Teste—of a Monsieur Teste who would have known (if only through reading books) Buckenwald and Auschwitz.”

—Mircea Eliade

“This unusual and distinguished novel demands one’s full attention, for anything less will be unequal to the authority of its narrative voice. It is a fiction which reads like fact; it is, in addition, an intellectual exercise not only for the writer—for whom it must have been as exhilarating as it was formidable—but for the reader as well . . . What is beguiling about this novel is that it sets its face so resolutely against any sort of dream fulfillment in the ordinary sense.”

—Anita Brookner, The Sunday Times

“Erika Hertz, a famous political philosopher, the admirable woman of the title . . . quickly becomes more than merely a brain. Without ever losing the quality of mind that accounts for her fame, Mr. Cohen creates a whole person and endears her to the reader . . . Mr. Cohen has written a novel about not-Hannah Arendt. He uses the denial brilliantly to inform the novel and to overlay it with the suspense of a puzzle . . . He has used the novelist’s imagination to explore fame in the intellectual world, to reveal life overwhelmed by ethics, to take the reader to the miraculous town.”

—Earl Shorris, The New York Times Book Review

“A fine novel.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Engrossing … brilliant.”

—Valentine Cunningham, The Observer

Arthur Cohen (1928–1986) was a novelist, publisher, and the author of many non-fiction works on the history of modern Jewish thought. In 1951, he co-founded (with Cecil Hemley) the Noonday Press; and in 1954, he founded Meridian Books. He was also editor in chief of Holt, Rinehart & Winston, and was on the board of the PEN American Center. An Admirable Woman won the National Jewish Book Award. He lived in New York City.

Joshua Cohen’s most recent novel, The Netanyahus, received the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His other books include Moving Kings, Book of Numbers, and Witz. He is the editor of He: Shorter Writings of Franz Kafka and I Want to Keep Smashing Myself Until I Am Whole: The Elias Canetti Reader.

The Tunnel • ISBN: 9781968671143

McNALLY EDITIONS no. 55 • Pub: Aug 4, 2026

$19.00 • Paperback with flaps • 5" x 8.5" • 320 pages

eBook ISBN: 9781968671150

UK Pub: Dec 3, 2026 • UK Price: £13.99