Wide Sargasso Sea

One of the BBC's '100 Novels that Shaped the World'<BR><BR>Jean Rhys's spell-binding novel Wide Sargasso Sea, inspired by Jane Eyre and winner the Royal Society of Literature Award is beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range.<BR><BR>'There is no looking glass here and I don't know what I am like now... Now they have taken everything away. What am I doing in this place and who am I?'<BR><BR>If Antoinette Cosway, a spirited Creole heiress, could have foreseen the terrible future that awaited her, she would not have married the young Englishman. Initially drawn to her beauty and sensuality, he becomes increasingly frustrated by his inability to reach into her soul. He forces Antoinette to conform to his rigid Victorian ideals, unaware that in taking away her identity he is destroying a part of himself as well as pushing her towards madness.<BR><BR>Set against the lush backdrop of 1830s Jamaica, Jean Rhys's powerful, haunting masterpiece was inspired by her fascination with the first Mrs Rochester, the mad wife in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.<BR><BR>'Compelling, painful and exquisite' Guardian<BR><BR>'Brilliant. A tale of dislocation and dispossession, which Rhys writes with a kind of romantic cynicism, desperate and pungent' The Times<BR><BR>'Rhys turns a menacing cipher into a grieving, plausible young woman, and one whose story says whole worlds about global mixtures, about the misunderstandings between the colonized, the colonizers and the people who can't easily say which they are' Time<BR><BR>Jean Rhys was born in Dominica in 1890, the daughter of a Welsh doctor and a white Creole mother, and came to England when she was sixteen. Her first book, a collection of stories called The Left Bank, was published in 1927. This was followed by Quartet (originally Postures, 1928), After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1930), Voyage in the Dark (1934) and Good Morning, Midnight (1939). None of these books was particularly successful and with the outbreak of war they went out of print. Jean Rhys dropped from sight until nearly twenty years later she was discovered living reclusively in Cornwall. During those years she had accumulated the stories collected in Tigers are Better-Looking. In 1966 she made a sensational reappearance with Wide Sargasso Sea, which won the Royal Society of Literature Award and the W. H. Smith Award. Her final collection of stories, Sleep It Off Lady, appeared in 1976 and Smile Please, her unfinished autobiography, was published posthumously in 1979. Jean Rhys died in 1979.

Warum sich nicht einfach verkriechen und zu Tode trinken? Eine Freundin leiht der unglücklichen Sasha Geld und schickt sie nach Paris. Sie soll auf andere Gedanken kommen. Aber was für Gedanken können das schon sein? In Paris hat Sasha einst ihre große Liebe gefunden - und viel mehr als das verloren. Sie lässt sich durch die Straßen treiben, besucht die Bars und Restaurants, in denen sie damals war. Doch überall spürt sie Ablehnung. Am schlimmsten ist es, wenn sie in ihrem schäbigen Hotelzimmer sitzt, an die Decke starrt oder - noch schlimmer - in ihr Inneres. Gleichzeitig hofft sie, dass nicht wieder dieser nichtsnutzige Gigolo an ihrer Tür klopft. Und dann wieder hat sie Angst, dass er nicht kommt.Ein Roman von der verhangenen Schönheit einer verrauchten Bar am Ende der Nacht: Man ist allein, das Glas ist leer, die letzte Zigarette ist geraucht.

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'<BR><BR>'Rhys took one of the works of genius of the 19th Century and turned it inside-out to create one of the works of genius of the 20th Century' Michele Roberts<BR><BR>Jean Rhys's masterpiece tells the story of Jane Eyre's 'madwoman in the attic', Bertha Rochester.<BR><BR>Born into the oppressive, colonialist society of 1930s Jamaica, white Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent beauty and sensuality. After their marriage, however, disturbing rumours begin to circulate which poison her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is inexorably driven towards madness, and her husband into the arms of another novel's heroine. This classic study of betrayal, a seminal work of postcolonial literature, is Jean Rhys's brief, beautiful masterpiece.<BR><BR> Edited with an introduction and notes by Angela Smith

Jean Rhys's late, literary masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea was inspired by Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and is set in the lush, beguiling landscape of Jamaica in the 1830s. Born into an oppressive, colonialist society, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent sensuality and beauty. After their marriage the rumours begin, poisoning her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is driven towards madness.