Inventory of a Life Mislaid

'Wonderful - a brave, inventive, touching distillation of memory and imagination, shimmering with images, sounds and scents, conjuring a clash of lives, worlds and words' Jenny Uglow 'As delicate as the lace her mother hemmed, as sharp as the facets of the diamond rings her mother lost, Marina Warner's Inventory of a Life Mislaid is a captivating re-creation of her childhood in a lost Cairo, so incomparably louche, sensuous and fragrant, and of her parents' improbable marriage' Ferdinand Mount 'An entrancing weave of memoir, history, autobiography and fiction, this adventurous book voyages through time and space to re-discover, re-imagine and reinvent a lost world. One of Marina Warner's most beautiful works' Michele Roberts 'Moving and original ... Warner's view of the past is always precise, at once generous and exacting. She has a gift for using objects to conjure up characters, feelings and atmospheres ... Poignant and exquisitely crafted, Inventory of a Life Mislaid is bound to become a classic' Catriona Seth 'Marina Warner's memoir is a poignant and imaginatively transgressive exploration of her parents' marriage, a war time love match between Southern Italy and upper class England and all the difficulties that entailed. It's full of evocative flash backs and cherished objects keenly remembered- at once a treasure house of family memories and a history of an epoch' Margaret Drabble 'High-risk and multidimensional ... Warner brings to these pages a lifetime of thinking about stories and the ways in which they shape our lives' Literary Review 'This is a wonderful rich, partly mythical memoir that sifts through the past to connect a family's secrets to the deep-rooted colonial assumptions that still resonate in a post-Brexit Britain ... never dull ... Eloquent and heartbreaking' TLS 'This memoir, built of letters, journal entries and photographs, is poignant and mythical' New Statesman