Sybille Bedfordová byla německá spisovatelka s vytříbeným stylem, jejíž díla často čerpají z vlastních životních zkušeností. Její próza se vyznačuje precizností a pronikavým pohledem na lidskou povahu, což jí vyneslo uznání jako jedné z nejvýznamnějších autorek 20. století. Prostřednictvím svých románů a cestopisů se ponořila do témat jako je brutalita, antisemitismus a složitost právních systémů. Bedfordová zanechala nesmazatelnou stopu v moderní anglické literatuře.
Set in 1920s Europe during the tumultuous interwar period, this autobiographical novel offers a rich, immersive depiction of the era's complexities. Through personal experiences, the narrative captures the cultural and social dynamics of the time, reflecting on themes of identity and resilience. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, it stands out for its evocative storytelling and historical insight, providing readers with a unique perspective on a pivotal moment in history.
This intensely remembered, partly autobiographical novel, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1989, describes the childhood of Billi, a girl growing up in Europe between the wars. When her father dies, she swaps life in a run-down German château for an exhilarating existence with her beautiful, talented and unreliable mother on the French Riviera. Sent away to England for schooling, the gypsy-like Billi ricochets between short-lived tutors and a life of reading, friends and public lectures. Returning to the Mediterranean, her unorthodox education - intellectual, emotional and sexual - continues among the vibrant community of artists, exiles and intellectuals who have colonised the coast, coaxing her towards a life of literature.
The first full-scale literary trial in Britain's history - re-counted by the ever-charming and inimitable Sybille Bedford.
Showing how history imprints itself on private lives, this memoir presents the author's sensuous, harrowing, and altogether remarkable life. It moves from Berlin during the Great War to the artists' set on the Cote d'Azur, through lovers, mentors, seducers and friends, and from genteel yet shabby poverty to relative comfort in London's Chelsea.
One autumn in the late 1920s, Constanza boards a train in Italy en route to Brussels and a new marriage. With her is her young daughter Flavia. Through an odd incident Constanza makes a casual decision that changes both their lives.
The narrative explores the contrasting lives of two families: the affluent Jewish Merzes of Berlin, who have lost touch with their illustrious heritage, and the Catholic aristocratic Feldens from southern Germany. The marriage of Julius von Felden and Melanie Merz intertwines their fates, creating a complex relationship marked by humor and tragedy. Through the eyes of an observant child, the story unfolds in pre-World War I Germany, offering a poignant reflection on a fading aristocratic lifestyle and the impending changes of the era.
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.
Sybille Bedford once wrote that travel writing is inseparable from the writer's tastes, idiosyncrasies, and general temperament - it is what happens to him when he is confronted with a column, a bird, a sage, a cheat, a riot; wine, fruit, dirt; the delay in the dirt, the failing airplane. 'Pleasures and Landscapes' is what happened to Mrs Bedford when, at the peak of her literary powers, she traveled through France, Italy, and the rest of Europe for Vogue, Esquire, and other magazines - eight classic essays that secure her a place at the table with A.J. Liebling and M.F.K. Fisher.
The Kaiser's Germany is the setting of Sybille Bedford's first and best-known novel, in which two families -- one from solid, upholstered Jewish Berlin, the other from the somnolent, agrarian Catholic South -- become comically, tragically, irrevocably intertwined. "Each family," writes the author, "stood confident of being able to go on with what was theirs, while in fact they were playthings, often victims, of the now united Germany and what was brewing therein." Did the monstrous thing that followed have its foundation in families such as these? "Writing about them made me think so. Hence the title."
Set in a two month period during the late 1920s, A Compass Error suggests that at some key juncture the book's main character, Flavia, made a mistake that somehow blew her life off course, perhaps into a new sexual orientation.