Jean Rhys, described by British poet and critic Al Alvarez as "one of the finest British writers of this century," was an artist of brilliance and fury best known for her late literary masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea. But she was also a woman in constant psychological turmoil, whose talent rescued her time and time again from alcoholism and breakdown. In this biography Lilian Pizzichini enters Rhys's twilit demimonde, from her dreamy girlhood in the lush island heat of Dominica through her bohemian life in cold, inhospitable London, her abandonment in 1920s Paris, three failed marriages and five misunderstood books, and finally to fêted elderly author.
"A wonderful book: exciting and dramatic as narrative, perceptive and original as literary criticism."—Francis Wyndham
