NO MODERNISM WITHOUT LESBIANS

A Sunday Times Book of the Year Winner of the Polari Prize A book about love identity acceptance and the freedom to write paint compose and wear corduroy breeches with gaiters To swear kiss publish and be damned It is vastly entertaining and often moving There isn t a page without an entertaining vignette The Times The extraordinary story of how a singular group of women in a pivotal time and place Paris Between the Wars fostered the birth of the Modernist movement Sylvia Beach Bryher Natalie Barney and Gertrude Stein A trailblazing publisher a patron of artists a society hostess a groundbreaking writer They were all women who loved women They rejected the patriarchy and made lives of their own forming a community around them in Paris Each of these four central women interacted with a myriad of others some of the most influential most entertaining most shocking and most brilliant figures of the age Diana Souhami weaves their stories into those of the four central women to create a vivid moving tapestry of life among the Modernists in pre War Paris One of the best books I ve read this year James Bridle