Description
Book SynopsisFollowing a successful career as an award-winning, best-selling novelist, in 2004 Lisa St Aubin de Teran retreated to a remote village in northern Mozambique. There she found her own African roots, founded a charity, and confronted new challenges. Much has been written about her life and escapades with a trio of Venezuelan exiles, life on an Andean hacienda, her return to literary fame, and two decades living in a crumbling Umbrian palace. But despite all the media hype about her, she managed to hide much of her actual life. Now, like the Japanese art of kintsugi, in this new memoir Lisa puts the shattered pieces of her life back together, filling in many of the dramatic, and often scandalous, gaps. While her life has been said to be stranger than fiction, it is fiction that has kept her afloat. This autobiography sets the record straight and shows a writer who for over half a century has enjoyed following her dreams, even when those dreams outdistanced her reach.
Trade Review"Lisa St Aubin de Teran writes with extraordinary vividness and clarity... She faces reality with a courage and skill that left me not knowing which to admire more: her gift as a writer or that she had the guts to carve out a place for herself in such an unforgiving world." (Independent) "Sensual, impressionistic prose that recreates vividly her experiences." (The Times) "An extraordinary woman... if you encountered her as a character in a novel, you'd want to read on." (Express) "She has the surrealist's gift for making the mundane exotic." (Financial Times) "Combines a powerful sense of place with an unusually compassionate understanding of human complexity." (Daily Telegraph) "The author has an enviable narrative gift, and there is something magical about her deployment of it." (Guardian) "A spellbinding storyteller." (The Listener)
