Author Description

Janine Lee captures with haunting accuracy in her first novel the cadences of privilege in postwar apartheid South Africa.<br/><br/>Irene is the wife of a rich industrialist in late 1940's Johannesburg. She lives trapped like a bird in a gilded cage of natural beauty, high fashion and off-stage violence. Not since Remains of the Day has a writer conjured up so weightlessly the gossamer patterns of a charmed life stained by the weight of history.<br/><br/>Irene in America is a fictional biography.<br/><br/>About the author:<br/>Janine Lee was born in South Africa and educated at St Hughes College Oxford. She and her husband Emanoel made their home in Oxfordshire England. This is her first novel.