A Compass Error - Softcover

Though it's a sequel to the novel A Favourite of the Gods, the coming-of-age tale A Compass Error makes a seductive introduction to the work of little-known, mid-century master Sybille Bedford. Flavia is 17, living alone in the South of France in the late 1920s, washed up like a bit of flotsam from the wreckage of her parents' lives. Despite her chaotic childhood, Flavia is a responsible little soul. As the novel opens, the white-hot summer days find her cramming for the entrance exams to Oxford, cheerfully disciplined about her studies. A chance encounter with the wife of a famous painter leads Flavia into the nighttime world of adulthood: convivial dinners, marathon drinking, and, well, hot love. Under these influences, Flavia makes a choice that will change the course of her life. In the end, the book amounts to a kind of perverse appreciation of youth and its terrible, terrible mistakes. --Claire Dederer

Sybille Bedford was born in 1911, in Charlottenburg, Germany, and was brought up in Italy, England, and France. in 1953, she made her literary debut with A Visit to Don Otavio, and has since published eight other books - including Jigsaw, A Legacy, A Favourite of the Gods, and A Compass Error, as well as classic accounts of criminal trials and other courtroom cases, and an acclaimed biography of her mentor Aldous Huxley. She was vice president of English PEN and one of Britain's nine Companions of Literature. Ms. Bedford lived in London where she passed away in February 2006.