Esmond and Ilia by Marina Warner
By one of the finest English writers of our time, a luminous memoir that travels from southern Italy to the banks of the Nile, capturing a lost past both personal and historical.Marina Warner's father, Esmond, met her mother, Ilia, while serving as an officer in the British Army during the Second World War. As Allied forces fought their way north through Italy, Esmond found himself in the southern town of Bari, where Ilia had grown up, one of four girls of a widowed mother. The Englishman approaching middle age and the twenty-one-year-old Italian were soon married. Before the war had come to an end, Ilia was on her way alone to London to wait for her husband's return and to learn how to be Mrs. Esmond Warner, an Englishwoman.
Ilia begins to learn the world of cricket, riding, canned food, and distant relations she has landed in, while Esmond, in spite of his connections, struggles to support his wife and young daughter. He comes up with the idea of opening a bookshop, a branch of W.H. Smith's, in Cairo, where he had spent happy times during the North African campaign. In Egypt, however, nationalists are challenging foreign influences, especially British ones, and before long Cairo is on fire.
Deeply felt, closely observed, rich with strange lore, Esmond and Ilia is a picture of vanished worlds, a portrait of two people struggling to know each other and themselves, a daughter's story of trying to come to terms with a past that is both hers and unknowable to her. It is an "unreliable memoir"--what memoir isn't?--and a lasting work of literature, lyrical, sorrowful, shaped by love and wonder.
Marina Warner is a novelist, critic, and cultural historian. Indigo and The Lost Father (winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Award and shortlisted for the Booker Prize) are two of her novels, as well as Mermaids in the Basement, a collection of short tales. Alone of All Her Sex, Monuments and Maidens, Joan of Arc, From the Beast to the Blonde, No Go The Bogeyman, and Managing Monsters (1994 Reith Lectures) are among her notable nonfiction works.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781681376448 |
| ISBN 10 | 168137644X |
| Title | Esmond and Ilia |
| Author | Marina Warner |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | The New York Review of Books, Inc |
| Year published | 2022-06-14 |
| Number of pages | 432 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |