Southpaw - Lisa St. Aubin De Teran

Venezuela and Italy, villages and prisons, forests and whore houses are the backdrops to these short stories which reflect the people and the places that have informed this wonderful writer's work. Antonio Mezzano in Umbria, the blind man who gathers village gossip in his one good hand; La Rusa who runs her Rainbow brothel in the Andes; Eladio 'the mad man' who searches with his mute son for the eagle they stubbornly believe will restore them to health; Otto, the political prisoner called Proff who shares his cell with a killer; tiny Silvio the poet on Buona Vita Street; Nanzia, the family cook whose heart was chopped like parsley on marble when love came her way. In many senses, these are the dispossessed, the southpaws - prostitutes, peasants, shopkeepers, mothers among them.

Lisa St Aubin de Tern was born in London in 1953. She has written five other novels, poetry and short stories and three memoirs including the bestselling THE HACIENDA. She lives in Umbria, Italy.

The collection contains some of St Aubin de Tern's most satisfying work to date ... An absorbing storyteller, St Aubin finds other people's life stories even more enchanted than her own
INDEPENDENT

Her vivid, telling sketches of characters in a remote Umbrian village linger in the memory
SUNDAY TIMES

A jubilant sense of place pervades the stories, together with the smell of woodsmoke, acacia blossom and the day's baking
SUNDAY TRIBUNE

Lisa St Aubin de Teran never seems to run out of material from her extraordinarily exotic life... as with all de Teran's books the language she uses is beautiful and evocative.
DAILY MAIL