A Compass Error (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Sybille Bedford

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141181990 ISBN 13: 9780141181998

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd, 2000

Synopsis

In this sequel to The Favourite of the Gods, seventeen-year-old Flavia, on her own in the south of France in the late 1930s, lives with the confidence and ardor of youth. She knows her destiny-it lies at Oxford, where she will begin a great career of public service. But this view of herself is at odds with reality; it springs from ideas she has of her idolized English father and of her blessed Italian mother, Constanza. Only when she is caught up in an intrigue that is to determine the fate of those she most loves does she begins to discover her own true nature-even as she loses the bearings of her moral compass.

About this title

Review:

Though it's a sequel to the novel A Favourite of the Gods, the coming-of-age tale A Compass Error makes a seductive introduction to the work of little-known, mid-century master Sybille Bedford. Flavia is 17, living alone in the South of France in the late 1920s, washed up like a bit of flotsam from the wreckage of her parents' lives. Despite her chaotic childhood, Flavia is a responsible little soul. As the novel opens, the white-hot summer days find her cramming for the entrance exams to Oxford, cheerfully disciplined about her studies. A chance encounter with the wife of a famous painter leads Flavia into the nighttime world of adulthood: convivial dinners, marathon drinking, and, well, hot love. Under these influences, Flavia makes a choice that will change the course of her life. In the end, the book amounts to a kind of perverse appreciation of youth and its terrible, terrible mistakes. --Claire Dederer

About the Author:

Sybille Bedford was born in 1911, in Charlottenburg, Germany, and was brought up in Italy, England, and France. in 1953, she made her literary debut with A Visit to Don Otavio, and has since published eight other books - including Jigsaw, A Legacy, A Favourite of the Gods, and A Compass Error, as well as classic accounts of criminal trials and other courtroom cases, and an acclaimed biography of her mentor Aldous Huxley. She was vice president of English PEN and one of Britain's nine Companions of Literature. Ms. Bedford lived in London where she passed away in February 2006.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0141181990
• ISBN 13: 9780141181998
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240