A Theatre for Dreamers : A Novel
Author(s): Polly Samson
1960. The world is dancing on the edge of revolution, and nowhere more so than on the Greek island of Hydra, where a circle of poets, painters and musicians live tangled lives, ruled by the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, troubled queen and king of bohemia. Forming within this circle is a triangle: its points the magnetic, destructive writer Axel Jensen; his dazzling wife, Marianne Ihlen; and the young Canadian poet Leonard Cohen.
Into their midst arrives Erica, a teenager with little more than a bundle of blank notebooks and her grief for her mother. Settling on the periphery of this circle, she watches, entranced and disquieted, as a paradise unravels.
Burning with the heat and light of Greece, A Theatre for Dreamers is a spellbinding novel about utopian dreams and innocence lost, and about the wars waged between men and women on the battlegrounds of genius.
Review(s):
"A coming-of-age story which slyly interrogates the creative battle of the sexes while transporting you to the beauty of a Greek island in summer."
"Samson captures the darkness, emerging fractures and the beauty of their lives in a sharply feminist novel."
"One of the year’s most lushly enjoyable novels."
"Brings to life this world of silver-spangled seas, scrumptious food and bohemian bed-hopping."
“An alluring historical novel. . . [and] a delectable work of escapism. Set on the impossibly picturesque Greek island of Hydra, it focuses on a group of expatriate writers and artists living the bohemian life in 1960. . . . Brilliant people in a beautiful setting add up to seductive time travel, with an edge.”
“Polly Samson’s latest is a lush and dreamy summer read.”
“The gilded idyll of English writer Polly Samson’s A Theatre for Dreamers will transport you to the Greek island of Hydra with immersive, sensual prose: you smell the lemon trees, taste the retsina, hear the bouzouki—and long for a refreshing afternoon swim in the Aegean.”
“[A] fantastic summer read.”
ISBN: 9781443463485