Patricia Highsmith and her ashes were interred in its columbarium. She left her estate, worth an estimated $3 million, and the promise of any future royalties to the Yaddo colony, where she spent two months in 1948 writing the draft of "Strangers on a Train". Highsmith bequeathed her literary estate to the Swiss Literary Archives at the Swiss National Library in Bern, Switzerland. Her Swiss publisher, Diogenes Verlag, was appointed literary executor of the estate. Highsmith was a resolute atheist. Although she considered herself a liberal, and in her school years had gotten along with Black students, in later years she became
What Was Before how we choose to tell stories." What Was Before What Was Before () is a 2010 novel by the German writer Martin Mosebach. Through a series of vignettes, it tells the story of a man from the affluent suburbs of Frankfurt, who is asked by his girlfriend what his life was like before they met. An English translation by Kári Driscoll was published in 2014. "Publishers Weekly" wrote: "Mosebach's charming, exuberant narrator is not be trusted, and the novel calls into question our notions of memory. Mosebach's writing is florid, tinged with a biting wit. ... Irreverent, playful, and intricate,