Fragments of life

Description

with this novel, Booker Prize finalist 1989 and published in Spanish a year later, Salamandra begins the recovery of the work of one of the great European writers of our time. Recently passed away at the age of ninety-four., Sybille Bedford was the daughter of a German father and an English mother., and belonged to the last generation of aristocrats who considered Europe their true homeland. His narrative work, markedly autobiographical, moves with mastery on the subtle border that separates memory and imagination, memories and literature, and constitutes the most authentic and moving testimony of an era of brilliance and splendor that ended up devoured by tragedy. Fragments of Life begins in Germany at the end of the Great War. Written in first person, Billi describes her childhood in the castle of a small town in the Grand Duchy of Baden. Her mother has run away with a lover and she lives alone with her father, member of the Bavarian aristocracy, in the narrowness and precariousness. At nine years old, The sudden death of his father will change his destiny: Billi leaves her orderly life in Germany and begins a chaotic and dazzling existence with her mother in Italy.. It will be sent to England soon, where, with no more protection than his own readings and sporadic private teachers, Billi becomes self-taught and begins an extravagant intellectual education, emotional and sexual. In 1926, when Mussolini's presence begins to be intolerable, her mother and her new husband settle in Sanary-sur-Mer, a small french town, where Billi will spend her summers immersed in the vibrant community of artists and intellectuals whose center is the writer Aldous Huxley. In Sanary you will discover love, his mother's addiction to morphine and, above all, her vocation as a writer, which, in the end, will lead her to the highest levels of literary excellence. Fragments of Life is not only a window into a fascinating period of European history., but also an invitation to share the life adventure of an unusual woman. Without a hint of sentimentality, Bedford recounts his eccentric adolescence and youth with an enveloping sensuality, in sharp contrast with a reality that slides towards the individual and collective abyss.