Books by Sybille Bedford

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 cafes, and lives with all the confidence and relish of youth. Drawn into the demi-monde of artists and writers, Flavia is awoken to the pleasures and complications of adult life. Her world is overturned when she becomes fascinated by Andree - 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. 'A powerful and merciless book - a classic coming of age novel.' - Hilary Mantel 'The lure of the sensual life, the picnics, lobster salad, hock and seltzer and going to the opera, in Italy, in summer . . .' - The Times 'A mesmerising writer.' - Nicholas Shakespeare '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 'Sophisticated . . . skilful.' - New Statesman

'Going to law courts is a good education for a novelist. It provides you with the most extravagant material, and it teaches the near impossibility of reaching the truth.'Sybille Bedford, Paris Review (1993)For The Faces of Justice (1961) Sybille Bedford journeyed through Europe to sit in the press box of the courts of law - high courts, low courts, police courts. In England, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, she watched the prisoners at the bar, the accusing community arrayed against them, the advocates, the jurors, the judges on the bench. She saw justice being attempted under the law - the best we can do, the worst we can do - varying in subtle yet astonishing ways from country to country. The result is a story about justice, humanity and the individual - moving, dramatic, superbly observed, splendidly told.

Beginning in 1956 with the publication of A Legacy, Sybille Bedford has narrated - in fiction and non-fiction - what has been by turns her sensuous, harrowing, altogether remarkable life. In this magnificent memoir, she moves from Berlin during the Great War to the artists' set on the C te d'Azur of the 1920s, through lovers, mentors, seducers and friends, and from genteel yet shabby poverty to relative comfort in London's Chelsea. Whether evoking the simple sumptuousness of a home-cooked meal or tracing the heart-rending outline of an intimate betrayal, she offers spellbinding reflections on how history imprints itself on private lives.

Mexico, through the eyes of Sybille Bedford is a country of passion and paradox: arid desert and shrieking jungle, harsh sun and deep shadow, violence and sentimentality. In her frank descriptions of the horrors of travel - through bug-infested jungle, trapped in a broiling stationary train, or in a bus with a dead fish slapping against her face - she gains our trust. But it is the charmed world of Don Otavio which steals our imagination. He is, she says, "one of the kindest men I ever met". She stays in his crumbling ancestral mansion, living a life of provincial ease and observing with glee the intense life of a Mexican neighbourhood.