Jigsaw

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1989, Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education is a semi-autobiographical novel that tells the story of Billi, a girl growing up in Europe between the two World Wars. Upon the death of her German baron father, Billi moves from the family château to live with her vibrant and erratic English mother on the French Riviera. From there she is sent for schooling in England, where she lives an itinerant life, boarding among a bohemian crowd, attending galleries and public lectures, and reading some of the greatest books of the era. Her ambition to become a writer is nurtured when she returns to the Mediterranean and meets a community of stimulating artists and intellectuals, including Aldous Huxley, while her mother’s life takes a tragic turn. Powerfully evocative and densely observed, Jigsaw assembles the puzzle pieces of the author’s life to paint a vivid portrait of a vanished age.