"Was Dr. Ritter, With His Steel Teeth, Poisoned in Paradise? Was Baroness Eloise,' Known as Crazy Panties,' Who Ruled the Island With a Gun and Love, Murdered by One of Her Love Slaves After She Had Driven the Other to His Death? And Why is Frau Ritter Going Back to What She Once Called Hell's Volcano?' the Mystery of the Galapagos Island Which Germany Covets, to Be Solved At Last? This florid passage from a tabloid newspaper caught the eye of the author Abbott Kahler decades after it was published in 1941. Basically it was the equivalent of a record scratch, she recalls. I was thinking: what the hell is the story?"
"The answer revolves around a group of Europeans from the 1930s who attempted to start anew on the remote island of Floreana, only to encounter the human frailties they hoped to escape: chaos, blackmail, betrayal, disappearances and murder. The enduring mystery of what exactly happened is known as the Galapagos Affair. Kahler became so obsessed that she wrote a book about it called Eden Undone. And she is not alone. Ron Howard, the Oscar-winning film director, learned about the story when he saw some photos at a museum in the Galapagos."
"This led him to make Eden, a movie starring Jude Law, Ana de Armas, Sydney Sweeney and Vanessa Kirby released on Friday. Kahler understands the Hollywood potential. I've made a career of writing about stranger-than-fiction true stories and this is by far the strangest one I've ever come across, she adds. Just aside from the incredible cast of characters, it has timeless themes that still resonate today. Indeed, Howard's film opens with the blunt statement: Fascism is spreading. Germany between the wars faced mass poverty, social unrest and extremism that gave rise to the Nazi party."
A sensational 1941 tabloid headline revived interest in a 1930s episode on Floreana Island. A group of Europeans attempted to start anew on the remote Galapagos isle but encountered chaos, blackmail, betrayal, disappearances and murder, an episode remembered as the Galapagos Affair. The episode inspired a book titled Eden Undone and a film called Eden starring Jude Law, Ana de Armas, Sydney Sweeney and Vanessa Kirby. The film frames the story against rising fascism in interwar Germany and presents the Galapagos as an imagined refuge from social collapse and extremism.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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