Inventory of a Life Mislaid: An Unreliable Memoir

Warner, Marina

ISBN 10: 0008347581 / ISBN 13: 9780008347581

Published by William Collins, 2021

About this Item

First signed edition Book in fine condition. Wrapper in near fine condition.Small crease to tip of uppermost right hand corner of front wrapper.

Seller Inventory # ABE-1759325245939

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Inventory of a Life Mislaid: An Unreliable Memoir
• Publisher: William Collins
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0008347581
• ISBN 13: 9780008347581
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

A luminous memoir of post-war childhood, adventure and loss on the banks of the Nile.

‘Wonderful – a brave, inventive, touching distillation of memory and imagination’ JENNY UGLOW

Inventory of a Life Mislaid follows Marina Warner’s beautiful, penniless young mother Ilia as she leaves southern Italy in 1945 to travel alone to London. Her husband, an English colonel, is still away in the war in the East as she begins to learn how to be Mrs Esmond Warner, an Englishwoman.

With diamond rings on her fingers and brogues on her feet, Ilia steps fearlessly into the world of cricket and riding. But, without prospect of work in a bleak, war-ravaged England, Esmond remembers the glorious ease of Cairo during his periods of leave from the desert campaign. There, they start a bookshop, a branch of W. H. Smith’s. But growing resistance to foreign interests, especially British, erupts in the 1952 uprising, and the Cairo Fire burns the city clean.

Evocative and imaginative, at once historical and speculative, this memoir powerfully resurrects the fraught union and unrequited hopes of Warner’s parents. Memory intertwines richly with myth, the river Lethe feeling as real as the Nile. Vivid recollections of Cairo swirl with ever-present dreams of a city where Warner’s parents, friends and associates are still restlessly wandering.