Author and poet Rhonda Douglas hosts a conversation between national bestsellers Steven Price and
Jennifer Robson
on the overlap between art and commerce, and on the art and craft of building fiction from history.
In sun-drenched Sicily, among the decadent Italian aristocracy of the late 1950s, Giuseppe Tomasi, the last prince of Lampedusa, struggles to complete the novel that will be his lasting legacy, The Leopard. With a firm devotion to the historical record,
Lampedusa
, the latest Giller-nominated novel from Steven Price, leaps effortlessly into the mind of the writer and inhabits the complicated heart of a man facing down the end of his life, struggling to make something of lasting worth while there is still time.
With
The Gown,
Jennifer Robson takes us inside the workrooms where one of the most famous wedding gowns in history was created. Balancing behind-the-scenes details with a sweeping portrait of a society left reeling by the calamitous costs of victory, she introduces readers to three unforgettable heroines, their points of view alternating and intersecting throughout its pages, whose lives are woven together by the pain of survival, the bonds of friendship, and the redemptive power of love.
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The Gown is marvelous and moving, a vivid portrait of female self-reliance in a world racked by the cost of war.
