The Book Of Colour: A Family Memoir

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

'Formidable... memorable and poetic' - Evening Standard 'Wandering through dreams and nightmares from Praslin Islands to Mauritius and finally to England, the author unfolds the troubled lives of her forbears, cursed by racial prejudice, sexual inhibition and recurrent mental illness. This first novel is a powerfully and cleverly written expurgation of personal feelings, drawing the reader into a landscape like that of a Dali painting' - Eileen Cowey, Scotland on Sunday The Book of Colour is about childhood, about madness, about the fear of miscegenation - and about a pig. It establishes Julia Blackburn as one of the most original English writers since Chatwin. It was shortlisted for The Orange Prize 1996.

Reviews

Her narrative vibrates with symbolism and portent. Every event, every encounter, every object shimmers with talismanic power -- Michiko Kakutani * New York Times *
As a book about the partiality of family history and the peculiar spells of memory, The Book of Colour could hardly be bettered * Observer *
A brilliant fantasy of bizarre and magical imagination -- Mary Wesley * Daily Mail *

Author Bio

Julia Blackburn has written five books of non-fiction - Charles Waterton, The Emperor's Last Island, Daisy Bates in the Desert, Old Man Goya and With Billie - a family memoir, The Three of Us, which won the 2009 J. R. Ackerley Award and, most recently, Thin Paths, which was shortlisted for the 2011 Costa Biography Award and the 2012 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. She has also written the novel The Leper's Companions, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She is the author of seventeen short stories specially commisioned by BBC Radio, a selection of which were published in My Animals and Other Family, and four radio plays, including The Spellbound Horses.