He was homosexual and twenty years older than her, but they married in a union she called an “intellectual alliance.”[1] In 1946, after the end of the Second World War she moved with him to Frankfurt where she would stay for the rest of her life.

[3] She wrote several highly regarded novels and travelogues, as well as translating works by Theodor Adorno, Uwe Johnson, Wolfgang Hildesheimer and Peter Handke into French.

Her husband committed suicide in 1986 after he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and she wrote an account of it in Hemlock (1988).

[2] Although popular in France and Germany, Wittkop's works were not widely available in English until recent years.

English translations of Les Départs exemplaires (Exemplary Departures, 1995) and Sérénissime Assassinat (Murder Most Serene, 2001) were published by Wakefield Press in 2015.