Author:Isak Dinesen
Romantics, adventurers, sensualists, melancholics and dreamers inhabit the bizarre and exotic world conjured up in these seven intricately interwoven tales, whose settings range from Tuscany and Elsinore, to a dhow on its way from Lamu to Zanzibar.
Proclaimed a masterpiece on its publication in 1934, this collection is shot through with themes of love and desire - from the maiden lady who now believes herself to have been the grand courtesan of her time, to the Count whose wife is so jealous that she cannot bear him to admire her jewels, and Lincoln Forsner, an Englishman whose search for a woman he met in a brothel leads him into many strange adventures.
Remarkably good... Perverse, poetic, odd... It will leave you feeling quite wonderful
—— Guardian'Excellent...This is no headbanging memoir of juvenile depravity, but an unashamed handbook to the sustained pursuit of sex
—— The TimesConsistently clever... genuinely memorable
—— Boston GlobeWhile each tale is original and complete in itself, a beautiful atmosphere of comic melancholy pervades the whole
—— EsquireFunny, softhearted and hopeful
—— Los Angeles Times