A Spirit in Prison

Complete and unabridged, with 57 full-page plates by Telemaco Signorini, Luigi Nono and Ettore Tito. The Bay of Naples: a widow, her daughter, an island, and a young man who does not know whose son he is. Hichens made his name at twenty-nine with The Green Carnation, an anonymous satire on Wilde so accurate it was withdrawn after the trials; here he writes the south — heat, water, a mother's secret — at enormous length and with real hypnotic power. Fifty-seven plates of coastal light and motherhood, from Böcklin to Mancini, match the novel's island setting and its buried maternal secret.