The Woman with the 5 Elephants (Die Frau mit den 5 Elefanten)

A portrait of Swetlana Geier who is considered the greatest translator of Russian literature into German. Best known for her recent translations of Dostoyevsky, Geier continues to work into her eighties. The secret to her talent lies in her ability to internalize the text and to draw from her own life story. As Geier travels back to her birthplace in Ukraine, she visits her "stork well," the symbolic source of her greatest pain and creativity. There, she puts her past into poetry--the translation of which becomes her most satisfying expression yet.