PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Livia Manera Sambuy (Author) Livia Manera Sambuy is an Italian writer whose book of profiles of American writers, Non Scrivere Di Me, was published in 2015. She is also the author and co-director of two documentary films on Philip Roth. She has been a staff writer at the literary pages of the Italian national daily Corriere della Sera for over twenty years. She lives in Paris. Todd Portnowitz is the translator of The Greatest Invention; Long Live Latin; and Go Tell It to the Emperor- The Selected Poems of Pierluigi Cappello, for which he was awarded a Raiziss/de Palchi Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Livia Manera is a wonderful detective-companion to lead us through this rich and complex world of princesses and prisoners-of-war, love and deceit, secrets and discovery... a thoroughly engaging read -- Kamila Shamsie, author of HOME FIRE This is biography at its best. An intimate and engrossing portrait of an extraordinary woman by a writer whose sense of story and place is perfect in every way -- John Zubrzycki, author of THE HOUSE OF JAIPUR A remarkable book about an extraordinary woman... impossible to put down. It offers a rare window into a vanished and exotic world -- Rudrangshu Mukherjee, author of NEHRU & BOSE A luminous portrait of both Amrit Kaur and Livia Manera: two exceptional women who had to question their assigned fates as daughters, wives, lovers and mothers in order to define themselves -- Judith Thurman A luminous portrait of Amrit Kaur first beguiled Livia Manera in a dusty museum in Mumbai, and became an obsession. This beautiful Indian princess, she learned, had escaped her family, leaving behind an unfaithful husband, young children, and a feudal world where the reward for a woman's submission was unimaginable privilege. It took Manera years to reconstruct her story, and at every stage, on several continents, mysteries and obfuscations thwarted her. The truth, when she finally discovered it, came as a shock, and a revelation. And the result of her quest is an even more luminous portrait - of both Amrit Kaur, and Livia Manera - two exceptional women who had to question their assigned fates as daughters, wives, lovers, and mothers in order to define themselves -- Judith Thurman
