LITERARY BIOGRAPHY

Nancy Durrell was a woman famous for her silences. Anais Nin said ‘I think often of Nancy’s most eloquent silences, Nancy talking with her fingers, her hair, her cheeks, a wonderful gift. Music again.’

As the first wife of Lawrence Durrell, author of The Alexandria Quartet, it is perhaps surprising that she is an unknown entity, a constant presence in the biographies of Durrell and others in the Bloomsbury set, yet always a shadowy figure, beautiful and enigmatic.

But who was the woman who was with Durrell during the most important years of his development as a writer? Joanna Hodgkin decides to retrace her mother’s fascinating story: the escape from her toxic and mysterious family; the years in bohemian literary London and Paris in the 1930s; her marriage to Durrell and their discovery of the ‘Eden’ of pre-war Corfu and her desperate struggle to survive in Palestine alone with a small child as the British Mandate collapsed.

AMATEURS IN EDEN is a fascinating biography of a literary marriage and of an unusual woman struggling to live an independent life.

This is not just a memoir of her mother. This is the history of a literary wife. On both counts, Hodgkin succeeds beautifully . . . [Nancy’s] story is not a footnote; it is absolutely central. – Independent

Frank and captivating . . . rich in charm and pathos . . . Hodgkin has done both Nancy and herself proud with this fresh portrait of a marriage we thought we knew, and of a woman we have never known well enough. – Sunday Times – Miranda Seymour

‘It’s a cracking story, and Hodgkin . . . is a meticulous researcher’ – Observer – Olivia Laing

The animating spirit that pulses through this joint biography is to be thoroughly applauded. – Literary Review – D. J. Taylor

An enjoyable, revisionist account of a bohemian marriage. And a smack in the face for Durrell acolytes who think the great man deserved a worthier first mate. – Guardian – Blake Morrison

First Edition. pp. 265 illusts #191024