Voyage in the Dark

A tragic tale of a young woman's descent into isolation and despair, inspired by Jean Rhys's own experiencesFirst published in 1934, Voyage in the Dark is the story of an unhappy love affair, a portrait of a hypocritical society and an exploration of exile and breakdown; all written in Jean Rhys's hauntingly simple and beautiful style. Eighteen, on her own and independent as much through circumstance as character, Anna has exchanged the West Indies of her childhood for the cold greyness of England, with its narrow streets and narrower rules. As she drifts towards the demi-monde of 1914 London, she comes to realise that life will never be so free and easy again. Her childish dreams have been replaced by the harsher reality of living in a man's world, where all charity has its price.

“Prescient and technically astonishing--Geoff Dyer, GQ Every so often someone comes along whose prose style is so alert and fresh, so remote from the mainstream idiom of English social fiction that is seems miraculous that they should be able to write like that and be British too. Jean Rhys is such a writer--Jonathan Raban [Jean Rhys's novels] have the quality of the best books by seeming to have written themselves, and reading them one flinches at truth after truth--Howard Moss, The New Yorker”

Prescient and technically astonishing -- Geoff Dyer GQ
The kind of book you want to stand up and applaud -- Caryl Phillips
Every so often someone comes along whose prose style is so alert and fresh, so remote from the mainstream idiom of English social fiction that is seems miraculous that they should be able to write like that and be British too. Jean Rhys is such a writer -- Jonathan Raban
[Jean Rhys's novels] have the quality of the best books by seeming to have written themselves, and reading them one flinches at truth after truth -- Howard Moss The New Yorker

Jean Rhys was born in Dominica in 1894. After arriving in England aged sixteen, she became a chorus girl and drifted between different jobs before moving to Paris, where she started to write in the late 1920s. She published a story collection and four novels, after which she disappeared from view and lived reclusively for many years. In 1966 she made a sensational comeback with her masterpiece, Wide Sargasso Sea, written in difficult circumstances over a long period. Rhys died in 1979.

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