Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education

(Paperback, New edition)

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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 chteau 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.