Erin Pizzey Knihy

By the early 1970s the women's movement was sweeping the Western world. Erin Pizzey was one of millions hoping for change but found herself disagreeing with its more radical aims. Committed to the idea of women offering mutual support, she opened a community centre in a house in Chiswick, London. Soon the house filled up with battered women and children. The offspring of violent parents herself, she understood their plight. Domestic abuse was regarded as something for families to settle behind closed doors, and a woman who left a man was deemed to have made herself homeless, with her children sent into care. Erin established the first refuge in the world for battered women and children in 1971. She had a bitter fight on her hands, not only with the women's movement - outraged by her findings that women were as capable of violence as men -but by priests who called her a marriage-wrecker as well as councils, social services and law courts which tried to get the overcrowded shelter closed down. Before long, though, people began to realize the value of her work.

A novel which traces the disparate lives of Sophia Oblimova in wartorn Shanghai and her grandaughter Natasha in peace-time USA. Previous novels by the author include "The Consul General's Daughter", "The Watershed" and "Shadow of the Castle".

This is the story of Pandora's escape - from marriage, society and from her old self. The four men of Pandora's past are very different from her new young love Ben, unfettered by sexual convention, he is gentle and warm - a man who loves women.