Editions

The Book Of Colour

  • Imprint: Vintage

  • ISBN: 9780099440734

  • Length: 192  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 13mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 139g

  • RRP: £9.99

The Book Of Colour

  • A Family Memoir

'Wandering through dreams and nightmares from Praslin Islands to Mauritius and finally to England, the author unfolds the troubled lives of her forbears, cursed by racial prejudice, sexual inhibition and recurrent mental illness. This first novel is a powerfully and cleverly written expurgation of personal feelings, drawing the reader into a landscape like that of a Dali painting' - Eileen Cowey, Scotland on Sunday

The Book of Colour is about childhood, about madness, about the fear of miscegenation - and about a pig. It establishes Julia Blackburn as one of the most original English writers since Chatwin. It was shortlisted for The Orange Prize 1996.

  • Imprint: Vintage

  • ISBN: 9780099440734

  • Length: 192  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 13mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 139g

  • RRP: £9.99

Reviews

  • "Her narrative vibrates with symbolism and portent. Every event, every encounter, every object shimmers with talismanic power"

    Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

  • "As a book about the partiality of family history and the peculiar spells of memory, The Book of Colour could hardly be bettered"

    Observer

  • "A brilliant fantasy of bizarre and magical imagination"

    Mary Wesley, Daily Mail

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About the Author

Julia Blackburn

Julia Blackburn has written five books of non-fiction - Charles Waterton, The Emperor's Last Island, Daisy Bates in the Desert, Old Man Goya and With Billie - a family memoir, The Three of Us, which won the 2009 J. R. Ackerley Award, and two novels, The Book of Colour and The Leper's Companions, both of which were shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She is the author of seventeen short stories specially commisioned by BBC Radio, a selection of which were published in My Animals and Other Family, and four radio plays, including The Spellbound Horses, which was broadcast in 2011.

Julia Blackburn

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