After Sappho

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2022 INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE YEAR
GUARDIANBOOK OF THE YEAR | NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR | BBC BOOK OF THE YEAR

It's 1895. Amid laundry and bruises, Rina Pierangeli Faccio gives birth to the child of the man who raped her - and who she has also been forced to marry. Unbroken, she determines to change her name; and her life, alongside it.

1902. Romaine Brooks sails for Capri. She has barely enough money for the ferry, nothing for lunch; her paintbrushes are bald and clotted... But she is sure she can sell a painting - and is fervent in her belief that the island is detached from all fates she has previously suffered.

In 1923, Virginia Woolf writes: I want to make life fuller - and fuller.

Sarah Bernhardt - Colette - Eleanora Duse - Lina Poletti - Josephine Baker... these are just a few of the women sharing the pages of a novel as fierce as it is luminous. Lush and poetic; furious and funny; in After Sappho, Selby Wynn Schwartz has created a novel that celebrates the women and trailblazers of the past - their constant efforts to push against the boundaries of what it means, and can mean, to be a woman - that also offers hope for our present, and our futures.