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The Last September

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

Read Elizabeth Bowen's accessible feminist take on the Irish aristocracy

The Irish troubles rage, but up at the 'Big House', tennis parties, dances and flirtations with the English officers continue, undisturbed by the ambushes, arrests and burning country beyond the gates. Faint vibrations of discord reach the young girl Lois, who is straining for her own freedom, and she will witness the troubles surge closer and reach their irrevocable, inevitable climax.

© Elizabeth Bowen 1929 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Critics Review

A book I read only some years ago, and was astonished by its modernity, its formidable intelligence and its punk sensibility, was The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen

Guardian

A strongly autobiographical portrait of a lost class marking out its final moments – every garden party, every house guest and every flirtation is touched by a sense of impending extinction

Guardian

When I read [The Last September] I was knocked out by the sheer magnificence of her writing, the cinematic possibilities, and her obsession with the minutiae and the detail of life… I was totally gripped by the story

Glasgow Herald

Posterity will one day return to Miss Bowen’s novels as a repository of clues to the inner life of our times

Sunday Telegraph

A combination of social comedy and private tragedy…brilliant description of Anglo-Irish life at the troublesome time of 1920

Times Literary Supplement
Author Elizabeth Bowen
Narrator Lauren Coe
Duration 10 hours and 6 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781473596061
Format Audiobook
Publisher Random House
Genre Classic fiction, Historical fiction
Availability AU, GB, IE

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