Butterfly's Shadow

(Paperback)

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Description

In the tradition of Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, a sweeping and affecting novel that takes Puccini's much loved Madame Butterfly as its dramatic starting point. Lee Langley's bewitching story of lost hope and thwarted love opens where Puccini's opera ends; with Madame Butterfly - Cho-Cho-San - handing over her beloved son to his American father before killing herself. In America Joey grows up torn between two cultures, haunted, like his parents, by their memories of what really happened on that fateful day. But just as Joey's fate is inextricably linked with the country of his birth, so too is the fate of America, and both of their paths will ultimately lead to Nagasaki.

Reviews

Langley's detailed descriptions of war blaze with brilliance -- Arifa Akbar * Independent *
A compelling portrait of a man in search of his lost self -- Nick Rennison * Sunday Times *
Beautifully written and vividly imagined, this is an impressive achievement -- Jessica Mann * Literary Review *
Lee Langley's big, ambitious new novel is a riveting read... and a deeply moving human story -- Deborah Moggach
A lovely novel... fragile and beautiful and so finely wrought -- Ruth Padel

Author Bio

Lee Langley is the author of nine highly praised novels including Changes of Address (shortlisted for the Hawthornden Prize) and Persistent Rumours (winner of a Commonwealth Writers' prize). Her most recent book was A Conversation on the Quai Voltaire, a volume of short stories, poetry and journalism. Her adaptation 'The Tenth Man', based on a Graham Greene story, was made into an award-winning movie starring Anthony Hopkins and Derek Jacobi. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in London.