Sybille Bedford’s evocative semi-autobiographical novel walks the fine line between memory and fiction as it recreates a lost time and place."Her writing is like the conversation of a clever, worldly friend who we wish would come by more often." - Joan Acocella, The New YorkerJigsaw is set in the limbo between world wars. The narrator, Billi, tells the story of her scholar-gipsy childhood and of her many teachers, beginning with her father, a pleasure-loving German baron, and her brilliant, beautiful, erratic mother. Later, on the Mediterranean coast of France, she meets the artists and intellectuals who will show her the way to a life’s work in literature, among them Aldous and Maria Huxley."To read Bedford’s work is to bask in the presence of someone at once German, French, and English—at the very least—who knew these countries from deep within herself and was able to enjoy their distinctions without ever belittling or simplifying them. If the word cosmopolitan had been coined with a particular literary figure in mind, it might have been Sybille Bedford." - Sylvia Brownrigg, The Paris ReviewSybille Bedford published her first book, The Sudden View: A Mexican Journey, in 1953. A Legacy appeared in 1956, and three other novels followed: A Favourite of the Gods (1963), A Compass Error (1968) and Jigsaw (1989), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The Best We Can Do (1958), an account of the murder trial of Dr John Bodkin Adams, was the first of Bedford’s writings on law at work. The Faces of Justice (1961) collected her observations on the courts in England, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France, followed by As It Was (1990).
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