Books by Rebecca West

The Return of the Soldier (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

by Rebecca West

Writing her first novel during World War I, West examines the relationship between three women and a soldier suffering from shell-shock. This novel of an enclosed world invaded by public events also embodies in its characters the shifts in England's class structures at the beginning of the twentieth century.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Copies

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (Penguin Classics)

by Rebecca West

“Rebecca West’s magnum opus . . . one of the great books of our time.” —The New Yorker

Written on the brink of World War II, Rebecca West’s classic examination of the history, people, and politics of Yugoslavia illuminates a region that is still a focus of international concern. A magnificent blend of travel journal, cultural commentary, and historical insight, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon probes the troubled history of the Balkans and the uneasy relationships among its ethnic groups. The landscape and the people of Yugoslavia are brilliantly observed as West untangles the tensions that rule the country’s history as well as its daily life.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Copies

No copies available.

The Book of Spies: An Anthology of Literary Espionage (Modern Library Classics)

by John Steinbeck, John le Carré, Anthony Burgess, Rebecca West

Here is an extraordinary collection of the world’s best literary espionage, selected by Alan Furst, a contemporary master of the genre. The Book of Spies brings us the aristocratic intrigues of The Scarlet Pimpernel, in which French émigrés duel with Robespierre’s secret service; the savage political realities of the 1930s in Eric Ambler’s classic A Coffin for Dimitrios; the ordinary (well, almost) citizens of John le Carré’s The Russia House, who are drawn into Cold War spy games; and the 1950s Vietnam of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, with its portrait of American idealism and duplicity. Drawing on acknowledged classics and rediscovered treasures, A Book of Spies delivers literate entertainment and excitement on every page.

Copies

No copies available.

The Return of the Soldier (Modern Library Torchbearers)

by Rebecca West

A soldier returns home transformed by World War I, sending shock waves through the lives of three women, in Rebecca West’s groundbreaking debut novel

Jenny has been waiting for the return of her cousin, Lieutenant Chris Baldry, from the faraway front lines of the war in France. She has kept vigil alongside Chris’s wife, Kitty, who has also been mourning the death of their first child. However, when Chris returns to their isolated estate outside of London, he is a man transformed, suffering from shell shock and believing he is still twenty years old. He is baffled by his surroundings, which have somehow aged beyond his memory, and he’s hopelessly, obsessively in love with a woman. Except—the woman he’s in love with is not his wife. He doesn’t even remember her, or the son they lost. Instead, he declares his undying love for Margaret, a poor innkeeper’s daughter with whom he shared a passionate summer romance fifteen years prior.

Rebecca West published her often-overlooked debut novel at the age of only twenty-six during the height of World War I, and was one of the first writers to explore the impact of posttraumatic stress in literature. The result is a tense, gripping portrait of sacrifice, regret, and the transformative power of war to alter our understanding of ourselves.

Copies

No copies available.

Radio Treason: The Trials of Lord Haw-Haw, the British Voice of Nazi Germany

by Rebecca West

The gripping courtroom drama of a Brooklyn-born Englishman who became the voice of Nazi Germany, by “one of the most brilliant and erudite journalists of the century” (The New York Times).
In 1945, The New Yorker commissioned star reporter Rebecca West to cover the London trial of William Joyce, who stood accused by the British government of aiding the Third Reich. Captured by British forces in Germany, Joyce was alleged to have hosted a radio program, Germany Calling, devoted to Nazi propaganda and calls for a British surrender.
The legal case against Joyce (known as “Lord Haw-Haw” for his supposedly posh accent) proved to be tenuous and full of uncertainties. Yet each new piece of evidence added to West’s timeless portrait of a social reject who turned to the far right, who rose through the ranks without ever being liked, and who sought validation through a set of shared hatreds―of elites, of communists, and especially of Jews.
As a work of psychological suspense, Rebecca West’s Radio Treason anticipates Truman Capote, Janet Malcolm, and Joan Didion at their best. As a study in political extremism, as Katie Roiphe writes in her foreword, “It is as if Lord Haw-Haw has been transported from her time into ours.”

Copies

Happy Starts at Home Change your space, transform your life

by Rebecca West

Making a home that works for you is the key to a better life. Interiors expert Rebecca West reveals how to align your heart, home, and health via small changes that make a big difference.

What does it take to be happy at home? It’s not about buying or not buying a new sofa. It’s about whether your home is working for you in the best way. Your home can directly improve your wellbeing and contentment with better health, sleep, and relationships, and ultimately decrease your stress levels to increase your all-round happiness. In this book, Rebecca West helps you to learn how to make your home feel brand new without actually relocating and how to redecorate so you can feel best in your space. Along with beautiful photographs, there are a variety of self-assessment activities to connect your financial, emotional, and physical health to your space to ensure it nurtures your vision—and invest your time and money more effectively too. With Happy Starts at Home, you can commit to buying fewer things and doing more to discover what’s holding you back, in order to create a home that makes you smile.

Copies

No copies available.