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    A Compass Error
    Unavailable
    A Compass Error
    Unavailable
    A Compass Error
    Ebook262 pages4 hours

    A Compass Error

    By Sybille Bedford

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    ‘A powerful and merciless book – a classic coming-of-age novel’ -- Hilary Mantel

    'Wide windows, not yet shuttered at that hour, opened from the circular white-washed room on slopes of olives and the distant shimmering bay. Flavia turned seventeen, alone, entirely alone for the first time in her life . . .'

    As the Second World War looms, Flavia is living in a small village in the South of France. She studies for her Oxford entrance, swims in the sea, eats at local cafés, and lives with the confidence and relish of youth.

    Drawn into the demi-monde of artists and writers, Flavia awakes to the pleasures and complications of adult life. Her world is overturned when she becomes fascinated by Andrée – beautiful, sophisticated, yet manipulative – and is caught up in a devastating intrigue.

    This is a dramatic companion novel to A Favourite of the Gods, also published by Daunt Books.

    There will always be people for whom her books are part of their mind’s life, and people who are discovering her for the first time as if entering a lighted room.’ --Victoria Glendinning

    ‘A mesmerising writer’ -- Nicholas Shakespeare, Daily Telegraph

    ‘One of our greatest writers’ -- Rosie Boycott

    ‘The lure of the sensual life, “the picnics, lobster salad, hock and seltzer and going to the opera, in Italy, in summer” . . . Bedford has the supreme novelist’s openness to chance experience, the ability to trace significant patterns in seemingly inconsequential things.’ -- The Times

    ‘Sophisticated.... skilful... she demonstrates firm control of form and clarity of style.’ -- New Statesman

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDaunt Books
    Release dateSep 15, 2011
    ISBN9781907970191
    Unavailable
    A Compass Error
    Author

    Sybille Bedford

    Sybille Bedford was born in 1911 in Charlottenburg, Germany, the daughter of a German father and an English mother. She grew up in Italy, France and England. The account of her travels in Mexico A Visit to Don Otavio was her first published book in 1953, and she followed it with three novels, A Legacy (1956), A Favourite of the Gods (1963) and A Compass Error (1968). Her semi-autobiographical novel, Jigsaw, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1989. Her memoir, Quicksands, was published in 2005. Sybille Bedford died in 2006.

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    Reviews for A Compass Error

    3.5/5

    32 ratings2 reviews

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    • 2/5
      An unpleasant book which consists of characters speaking to each other in an affected way, a fifty page info dump about the main character's grandmother and mother, and tedious monologues from a narcissist.
    • 3/5
      Sequel to Bedford's Favorite of the Gods. A young woman is drawn into a lesbian relationship by an older woman who uses the situation to harm both the girl and her mother.