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Enchanting and imaginative, A Theatre for Dreamers is a story of innocence lost and the stormy undercurrents of an idyllic artist community on the Greek island of Hydra.
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 king and queen of bohemia.
Forming within this circle is a triangle: its points the magnetic, destructive writer Axel Jensen, his dazzling wife Marianne Ihlen, and a young Canadian poet named Leonard Cohen. Into their midst arrives teenage Erica, 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 the wars waged between men and women on the battlegrounds of genius.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN: 9781526600592
Number of pages: 368
Weight: 256 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'Samson is an intensely sensual writer, conjuring up blue skies, the tang of wild herbs, the vivid splash of bougainvillea ... As good as a Greek holiday, and may be the closest we get this year' - The Financial Times
'As dreamily nostalgic as Cohen's song Famous Blue Raincoat' - Alex Preston, The Observer
'Sleazy, evocative, beautiful and entertaining' - Stuart Turton, The Guardian
'A thoroughly enjoyable drama of hedonism, enchantment and emotional beastliness' - The Times Literary Supplement
'A coming of age story set among a group of artists and poets, including Leonard Cohen, on the Greek island of Hydra in 1960. She is so good at mentally indelible imagery' - Jojo Moyes, The Guardian
'This well-crafted novel beautifully captures the texture of a halcyon age in which anything seems possible' - The Mail on Sunday
'It is a grand read and the prose falls translucently like the air ... Superb work and a delightful novel' - Thomas Keneally
'I was utterly entranced. It feels entirely true and effortless and compelling - in the way that all great novels do' - Justine Picardie
'If summer was suddenly like a novel, it would be like this one. Immaculate' - Andrew O'Hagan
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“Dreams of a paradise...”
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