Synopses & Reviews
Sybille Bedford (1911–2006) was a German-born English writer, best known for her partly autobiographical works, including
A Legacy and its follow-up,
Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education. An outspoken critic of the Nazi regime, Bedford was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an appointed Officer of the OBE. She was awarded the Golden PEN Award in 1993 and, after traveling across Europe and the United States for many years, settled in London where she lived until her death.
Brenda Wineapple is the author of several books of criticism, including the National Book Critics Circle award finalist White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and, most recently, Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848–1877. She is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, and The Nation, and was the recipient of a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2014. She teaches in the MFA programs at The New School and Columbia University.
Synopsis
A Legacy is the tale of two very different families, the Merzes and the Feldens. The Jewish Merzes are longstanding members of Berlin s haute bourgeoisie who count a friend of Goethe among their distinguished ancestors. Not that this proud legacy means much of anything to them anymore. Secure in their huge town house, they devote themselves to little more than enjoying their comforts and ensuring their wealth. The Feldens are landed aristocracy, well off but not rich, from Germany s Catholic south. After Julius von Felden marries Melanie Merz the fortunes of the two families will be strangely, indeed fatally, entwined.
Set during the run-up to World War I, a time of weirdly mingled complacency and angst, A Legacy is captivating, magnificently funny, and profound, an unforgettable image of a doomed way of life.
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