Böcker av Olivia Manning

___________'So glittering is the overall parade - and so entertaining the surface - that the trilogy remains excitingly vivid;

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RACHEL CUSK'A fantastically tart and readable account of life in eastern Europe at the start of the war' Sarah Waters'Wonderfully entertaining' ObserverAutumn, 1939.

'So glittering is the overall parade - and so entertaining the surface - that the trilogy remains excitingly vivid' - Sunday Times'Wonderfully entertaining' - ObserverAthens, 1941.

'Her gallery of personages is huge, her scene painting superb, her pathos controlled, her humour quiet and civilised' - Anthony Burgess'Glittering characterisation, sharp and eloquent writing' - Sunday Telegraph'Wonderfully entertaining' - ObserverBucharest, 1940.

Married, but obstinately set in their separate ways, Hugh and Kristy Foster know nothing of Al-Bustan, a far-flung island in the Indian Ocean. Too late they discover how it seethes with unrest and intrigue. Yet now when they need each other, the sullen, muttering forest seems only to intensify their differences.

Fourteen subtle and beautifully written stories of varying theme and setting are brought together in this brilliant collection: haunting studies of lonely childhoods, shrewdly perceptive portraits of adult relationships and black comedies of domestic deadlock - all infused with Olivia Manning's precise and consistent wit.

The classic World War II trilogy: 'The finest fictional record of the war produced by a British writer' Anthony Burgess

Pretty, brave and eighteen, Ellie has come to London in search of adventure. She soon finds it in Quintin Bellot, the handsome but tired dilettante who finds her a job in fashionable Chelsea. And Petta, his once beautiful wife, is fighting back age as fiercely as Ellie is plunging into it.

Orphaned, friendless and bewildered, young Felix Latimer comes to war-time Jerusalem to lodge with Miss Bohun, one of the most redoubtable (and ridiculous) of comic horrors in English fiction.