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Christina and Frieda are two staid women who want to break out but end up breaking down in Jane Bowles’ bizarre and marvellous 1943 novel.
Christina Goering is a wealthy spinster in pursuit of sainthood who ends up as a high-class call-girl, while Frieda Copperfield leaves her dull husband and heads for Panama where she falls in love with a prostitute. Written with biting wit and cool compassion, Two Serious Ladies is a bittersweet celebration of female freedom that has been hailed as a landmark in twenitieth-century literature.
‘A work of peculiar sharpness, originality and power.’
– Guardian
‘One of the really original pure stylists . . . a modern
legend.’ – Truman Capote
‘Extremely funny fantasy.’ – Observer
‘One of the finest modern writers of fiction in any language’
– John Ashbery, New York Times Book Review
JANE BOWLES was born in New York in 1917. In 1938
she married the writer and composer Paul Bowles and travelled
with him to Europe, Central America, Mexico and Sri Lanka,
before settling in Tangier, Morocco, in 1947. In addition
to Two Serious Ladies, she wrote the play In the
Summer House (which opened on Broadway in 1953) and her
famous collection of short stories, Plain Pleasures.
Her work has been translated into many languages, securing
her an international reputation. She died in Málaga
in 1973. |
