Carson McCullers: A Life - Hardcover

The life of Carson McCullers (1917-1967) rivals the plot of any of her stories. She had a painful small-town childhood in the South and shot from obscurity to international fame at the age of 23 with the publication of her first novel, "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter". Despite a mysterious and debilitating disease that haunted her from early adulthood, she went on the write works such as "The Member of the Wedding", "Reflections in a Golden Eye" and "The Ballad of Sad Cafe", adapted for Broadway and the cinema. She was a controversial figure, whose immense emotional needs sometimes overshadowed her great charm and deep intelligence, while her search for happiness led her to marry the same man twice. She surrounded herself with a large cast of the brightest celebrities of her time: Katherine Anne Porter, Truman Capote, John Huston, Marlon Brando, W.H. Auden and Tennesse Williams, among others, Above all she was a life force, a person who had a relentless need to write and who did so despite great physical pain, up until her untimely death at the age of 50. Josyane Savigneau's portrait provides a look at, arguably, one of the most enigmatic literary figures of the 20th century.