The lucidly written memoir of Iris Origo, the writer of the bestselling War in Val d'Orcia
It has only been through my affections that I have been able to perceive, however imperfectly, some faint "intimations of immortality"
Images and Shadows is the story of those affections: for a loving, shy father, who died when his daughter was very young; for a vital, headstrong mother; for friends and family, alive and dead. And for the places Origo lived: Ireland, America, England; the childhood home in the hills above Florence; and her own beloved La Foce - the desolate, deforested estate which she and her Italian husband bought, and into which they poured the energy and patience of their best years.
Iris Origo (1902-1988) is best known as a biographer and war diarist. But in Images and Shadows she writes with characteristic grace, wit and humility, almost reluctantly, about herself. Reissued with newly discovered photographs, it is both a moving insight into a lost age, and an illumination of the life and loves of an endlessly curious and thoughtful woman.
Iris Origo (1902-1988) was a British-born biographer and writer. She lived in Italy and devoted much of her life to the improvement of the Tuscan estate at La Foce, which she purchased with her husband in the 1920s. During the Second World War, she sheltered refugee children and assisted many escaped Allied prisoners of war and partisans in defiance of Italy's fascist regime and Nazi occupation forces. Pushkin Press also publishes her bestselling war diary, War in Val d'Orcia, as well as two of her biographies, A Study in Solitude: The Life of Leopardi - Poet, Romantic and Radical and The Last Attachment: The Story of Byron and Teresa Guiccioli.
About the Author :
Iris Origo (1902-1988) was a British-born biographer and writer. She lived in Italy and devoted much of her life to the improvement of the Tuscan estate at La Foce, which she purchased with her husband in the 1920s. During the Second World War, she sheltered refugee children and assisted many escaped Allied prisoners of war and partisans in defiance of Italy's fascist regime and Nazi occupation forces. Pushkin Press also publishes her war diaries, War in Val d'Orcia, as well as two of her biographies, A Study in Solitude: The Life of Leopardi - Poet, Romantic and Radical and The Last Attachment: The Story of Byron and Teresa Guiccioli.
Review :
Elegant and intelligent
A wonderful writer... Images and Shadows is as delicious and tear-inducing as Downton Abbey
An elegiac autobiography... illuminating
In her biographies she was able to write precisely on the cusp between the two cultures, turning her work into a bridge of interpretation and understanding
Self-effacing and cultivated... gently percipient
A true cosmopolite of vast energy and stunning intelligence
A masterly biographer here recounts her own story, and in this biography she is at her best
Origo was a remarkable writer, with a clear, engaging style, a mind steeped in history and scholarship, but alive always to the nuances and subtleties of human relationships. The hope is that [Pushkin's republication of her work] bring her a new generation of readers
