
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 16, 1994                   TAG: 9403160061
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-2   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ZURICH, SWITZERLAND                                LENGTH: Short

AILING NOVELIST S. PARETTI KILLS HERSELF

Novelist Sandra Paretti committed suicide after developing cancer, writing an obituary in which she called the disease "her last lover." She was 59.

Paretti died Saturday. The obituary she wrote appeared in the Neue Zuercher Zeitung on Monday, thanking the pro-euthanasia group Exit for its support.

"I had an easy and beautiful life," she wrote. "Like a Mozart symphony, it led to an easy and beautiful finale, untainted by feelings of guilt."

Born in Germany in 1935, Paretti wrote in German, and her books were not translated into English.

Her first book, set in the Napoleonic era, "The Rose and the Sword" appeared in 1967. Her last novel, "Tara Valese" was published in 1988 and was dedicated to women in Mafia circles.

She had lived in the Zurich area since 1969, and her books repeatedly topped the best-seller lists in Switzerland.

Paretti's lawyer, Manfred Kuhn, said she had suffered from an incurable cancer but had kept her illness secret from even her closest friends.

"The name of the disease is of no importance," Paretti wrote. "I did the same with my disease as with my life - I embraced it and, behold, it was my last lover."

by CNB