Jean Rhys, eine Schriftstellerin aus der Karibik, erlangte Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts Bekanntheit durch ihre eindringliche Fiktion. Ihre frühen Werke aus den 1920er und 1930er Jahren deuteten auf ihre spätere Wirkung hin. Erst mit der Veröffentlichung von Wide Sargasso Sea im Jahr 1966, einem Roman, der oft als "Prequel" zu Charlotte Brontës Jane Eyre gilt, entwickelte sie sich zu einer bedeutenden literarischen Figur. Rhys' Schreiben erforscht überzeugend Themen patriarchalischer Gesellschaften und Gefühle der Entfremdung, die aus ihren eigenen Erfahrungen mit der Suche nach Identität und Zugehörigkeit schöpfen.
So there's a good time coming for the ladies, is there?-a good time coming for the girls? About time too' Stories of women adrift in seedy bars and down-at-heel hotels, from a master of the short story form.
Contains such stories as: "La Grosse Fifi", "Vienne", "Tea with an Artist", and "Mixing Cocktails". They are all taken from a selection from The Left Bank in Penguin's edition of "Tigers Are Better Looking".
Mrs. Jansen, eine Frau mittleren Alters mit unbekannter Vergangenheit, lebt kurz in Paris. Ihr Leben ist geprägt von Alkoholabhängigkeit und dem Verlust ihres Sohnes. Der Roman thematisiert das innere und äußere Exil sowie das Gefühl der Wurzel- und Heimatlosigkeit, zentrale Motive in Jean Rhys' Werken.
'A wonderful bitter-sweet book, written with disarming simplicity' Esther Freud 'It was as if a curtain had fallen, hiding everything I had ever known,' says Anna Morgan, eighteen years old and catapulted to England from the West Indies after the death of her beloved father. Working as a chorus girl, Anna drifts into the demi-monde of Edwardian London. But there, dismayed by the unfamiliar cold and greyness, she is absolutely alone and unconsciously floating from innocence to harsh experience. Her childish dreams have been replaced by harsh reality. Voyage in the Dark was first published in 1934, but it could have been written today. It 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.
With a Selection from The Left Bank
Tigers are Better-Looking incorporates selections from Jean Rhys's first book of stories, The Left Bank , published in 1927, and later stories written after 1939. In them she encompasses within a few pages both the gaiety and charm of youth and love, and an awareness of all that threatens them. Writing in The New York Times , A. Alvarez has called these stories "extraordinary." The early stories have added value in that they illuminate Jean Rhys's development as a writer. Those written later, when her art was mature, are on the level of her novels and demonstrate that she is one of the most distinguished writers of our time, "the best living English novelist," again to quote Alvarez. The title of this collection comes from the opinion which many of Jean Rhys's characters share, that respectable people are as alarming as tigers, but "tigers are better-looking, aren't they?" It also reflects the astringent humor in her work; an explanation that however sad or even sordid her subject, she is never depressing. --From the book jacket
