Présentation de l'éditeur
A wonderfully gossipy novel that whisks readers through the glamorous worlds of turn-of-the-century Vienna, Paris, and London.
The Rakonitz family rich, cosmopolitan, and Jewish is ruled over by the indomitable will of the matriarch, Anastasia. From her exotically furnished house in west London, Anastasia holds court over her children, grandchildren, and vast extended family. For someone must resolve the quarrels, celebrate the births, deaths, engagements, bankruptcies, artistic triumphs, and explain the only way to prepare a delicious Crème Düten.
With the dawning of the twentieth century, a series of scandals and financial catastrophes strike the Rakonitzes, threatening the family ties and calling into question the legacy that binds them together.
Revue de presse
There is wealth here, and gaiety. There is middle European style, and food in abundance. It is very un-English, and enormously attractive. --Julia Neuberger
Biographie de l'auteur
G. B. Stern (1890-1973), born Gladys Bertha, grew up in Holland Park, and published her first novel,
Pantomime, in 1914. She was close to the centre of literary London, and counted Somerset Maugham, H. G. Wells, Rebecca West and Noël Coward as friends. She wrote over forty novels, several plays, short stories, works of non-fiction and memoir over her long writing career, but it was the series of novels based on her own family,
The Rakonitz Chronicles, the first of which is published as
The Matriarch, that established her popular and critical success.
