A Theatre for Dreamers

THE SUNDAY TIMES. BESTSELLER. A SUMMER READING PICK IN THE GUARDIAN. , SUNDAY TIMES. , THE TIMES. , DAILY MAIL. , FINANCIAL TIMES. AND EVENING STANDARD. 'The Greek island of Hydra is the star of this novel about a young woman and a 1960s bohemian community'. SUNDAY TIMES. , Summer Reading Pick 2020. 'Samson summons the vision and the reality in a beguiling, deeply evocative portrait of a vanished era' GUARDIAN. , Summer Reading Pick 2020. 'It's sleazy, evocative, beautiful and entertaining' STUART TURTON, GUARDIAN. , Summer Reading Pick 2020. 'Heady armchair escapism. An impressionistic, intoxicating rush of sensory experience'. Sunday Times. 'Sublime and immersive. If you wish you could disappear to a Greek island right now, I highly recommend' JOJO MOYES. 'A surefire summer hit. feels at once like a gift and an escape route'. Observer. 1960. The world is dancing on the edge of revolution, and nowhere more so than on the Greek island of Hydra, where a circle of poets, painters and musicians live tangled lives, ruled by the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, troubled king and queen of bohemia. Forming within this circle is a triangle: its points the magnetic, destructive writer Axel Jensen, his dazzling wife Marianne Ihlen, and a young Canadian poet named Leonard Cohen. Into their midst arrives teenage Erica, with little more than a bundle of blank notebooks and her grief for her mother. Settling on the periphery of this circle, she watches, entranced and disquieted, as a paradise unravels. Burning with the heat and light of Greece, A Theatre for Dreamers. is a spellbinding novel about utopian dreams and innocence lost - and the wars waged between men and women on the battlegrounds of genius. An Observer. Fiction Highlight 2020. 'Could hardly have come at a better time. Samson recreates one heady summer there (the Greek island of Hydra) with impeccably ripening prose, all thyme-scented hills and cascading bougainvillea' i paper. 'Beautiful' DOLLY ALDERTON 'Delicious' NIGELLA LAWSON. 'Intoxicating' Spectator. 'Oh my god, this book. I don't have words to convey its brilliance' MARIAN KEYES. 'A glorious novel' KATE MOSSE 'If summer was suddenly like a novel, it would be like this one' ANDREW O'HAGAN. 'The best book I've read all year' JOANNE HARRIS. 'Superb' THOMAS KENEALLY. A SUNDAY TIMES. TOP TEN BESTSELLER (APRIL 2020).