Quicksands: A Memoir

Description

A moving culmination to an epic personal story from one of the twentieth century's great writers Beginning in 1956 with the publication of A Legacy, Sybille Bedford has narrated - in fiction and non-fiction - what has been by turns her sensuous, harrowing, altogether remarkable life. In this magnificent memoir, she moves from Berlin during the Great War to the artists' set on the C te d'Azur of the 1920s, through lovers, mentors, seducers and friends, and from genteel yet shabby poverty to relative comfort in London's Chelsea. Whether evoking the simple sumptuousness of a home-cooked meal or tracing the heart-rending outline of an intimate betrayal, she offers spellbinding reflections on how history imprints itself on private lives.

Sybille Bedford was born in Germany in 1911 and was brought up in Italy, England and France. In 1989 her novel Jigsaw was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She has published eight other books and lives in London.

"A splendid book, lucid, balanced, humane, and civilized. It does what we ask books to do."