After Sappho, Selby Wynn Schwartz
After Sappho, Selby Wynn Schwartz
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After Sappho

Author: Selby Wynn Schwartz

Narrator: Daniela Acitelli

Unabridged: 7 hr 30 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/28/2023


Synopsis

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 BOOKER PRIZE

An exhilarating debut from a radiant new voice, After Sappho reimagines the intertwined lives of feminists at the turn of the twentieth century.

"The first thing we did was change our names. We were going to be Sappho," so begins this intrepid debut novel, centuries after the Greek poet penned her lyric verse. Ignited by the same muse, a myriad of women break from their small, predetermined lives for seemingly disparate paths: in 1892, Rina Faccio trades her needlepoint for a pen; in 1902, Romaine Brooks sails for Capri with nothing but her clotted paintbrushes; and in 1923, Virginia Woolf writes: "I want to make life fuller and fuller." Writing in cascading vignettes, Selby Wynn Schwartz spins an invigorating tale of women whose narratives converge and splinter as they forge queer identities and claim the right to their own lives. A luminous meditation on creativity, education, and identity, After Sappho announces a writer as ingenious as the trailblazers of our past.

About Selby Wynn Schwartz

Selby Wynn Schwartz holds a PhD in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of The Bodies of Others: Drag Dances and Their Afterlives, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, and the novella A Life in Chameleons.


Reviews

Goodreads review by David on August 28, 2023

After Sappho is a story of women and womanhood, a story of creativity, freedom, and excellence. This is scholar Selby Wynn Schwartz’s debut work of fiction, published by the excellent Galley Beggar Press. Schwartz traces the lives of European women in the Sapphic tradition who pushed against boundar......more

Goodreads review by Meike on August 31, 2022

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2022 This book is crafted around an ambitious, interesting idea: Amalgamating and intertwining the biographies of important lesbian feminist thinkers and pioneers in order to show their cultural impact and tell their stories in context. Alas, it does not work: The shor......more

Goodreads review by Mai on May 18, 2024

I wanted to like this one a lot. It won a prize. The cover is beautiful. The premise had me. What went wrong? Not that this is exactly that, but I have issues with short stories. And while we follow several women along the courses of their lives, it's not really in a linear fashion. The hopping back......more

Goodreads review by Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer on May 29, 2023

Now shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and an Orwell Prize for Political Fiction finalist. 8th in my 2022 Booker Prize longlist rankings (although very close to my shortlist) - my Bookstagram rating, ranking, summary review and Book themed Golden Retriever photo is here: [URL not allowed]......more

Goodreads review by Annette on October 10, 2022

After Sappho is a sapphic historical fiction, which involves many women and is told in cascading vignettes. The book begins with three women: Lina Poletti (Italian poet), Rina Faccio (Italian writer), and Anna Kuliscioff, who was born in Ukraine, but studied medicine in Italy and became one of the f......more