Description

Dawn Powell’s dazzling tale of ambition, betrayal and romantic chaos, introduced by Marlowe Granados.

‘A fascinating study of New York’s power society’ Hernan Diaz, author of Trust

‘Among the greatest writers of her time’ Andrew O’Hagan, author of Caledonian Road

Amanda Keeler is a bestselling novelist, famed for her martini-soaked parties. It’s a glamorous life, paid for in full by marriage to a tedious, teeth-grinding newspaper tycoon.

When a meek friend from her provincial past arrives in Manhattan, Amanda plots to use her as cover for an affair-until she realises that they have both fallen for the same man.

Sophisticated, scandalous and acidly funny, this is a portrait of a woman determined to have everything, even if it costs the one thing she never meant to gamble: her heart.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.

Dawn Powell (1896-1965) was a novelist and playwright known for her satires of New York’s cultural and literary circles. Born in Mount Gilead, Ohio, she endured a tumultuous childhood before running away at thirteen to live with an aunt who encouraged her writing aspirations. After graduating from Lake Erie College, Powell moved to New York City, immersing herself in the bohemian atmosphere of Greenwich Village.

She gained early recognition for her witty pieces in The New Yorker and Esquire, and in 1939 became a Scribner author, sharing the legendary editor Maxwell Perkins with Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Although Powell enjoyed a devoted circle of admirers, her work drifted into obscurity after her death. Interest in her novels was later revived by the tireless work of Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Tim Page, executor of her estate, and also through Gore Vidal’s influential appraisal in The New York Review of Books.

Publisher Review

A huge talent, Dawn Powell. Sentence by sentence, among the greatest writers of her time — Andrew O’Hagan, author of Caledonian Road Steers us through the lives of women who come to New York from the hinterlands, for love, money, opportunity and a good time. . . Few books have so bitingly and energetically captured the hunger for status and success that animate the city and enrage so many * NYT * A fascinating study of New York’s power society, this novel published in 1942 was way ahead of its time – and remains uncannily current — Hernan Diaz, author of Trust Effortlessly funny, fantastically mean without ever being cynical, and particularly astute on gender politics while avoiding earnestness and essentialism * The Atlantic, “The Great American Novels” * Brilliant and skilful. . . A Time to Be Born is startingly contemporary. It’s still impossible to live in New York without being run over by an Amanda Keeler or two. . . As far as I’m concerned, they deserve their success more than most men. But they still scare the dickens out of me — Candace Bushnell, author of Sex and the City I’m jealous of anyone who hasn’t read A Time to Be Born because they get to read it for the first time. . . Riotously funny and surprisingly tender and a brutally accurate satire of New York City life, even now. It ought to be as iconic as The Great Gatsby — James Frankie Thomas, author of Idlewild Funny, smart, cool and socially impassioned. Dawn Powell is one of the great U.S. novelists of the 20th-century — Fay Weldon, author of The Life and Loves of a She Devil Teeming with egregiously opportunistic, social-climbing Manhattanites… Powell’s spoof of the high and mighty still sizzles half a century after it was written * Publishers Weekly *