After Soppho

Sappho lived between c. 630 – c. 570 BC on the island of Lesbos in Greece. She was known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by music. 

In the novel, After Sappho, Selby Wynn Schwartz combines possible incidents from the lives of female authors, poets, artists, actors and singers who were known for promoting feminism in the battle for freedom, justice and control of how they wanted to live their lives. These women pushed against the boundaries in a male dominated society.

A chorus of narrators question whether modern feminists owe more to the beliefs and ideals portrayed in the the remnants that have survived of the works of Sappho or to the beliefs of the Trojan prophetess-princess Cassandra, condemned to be unbelieved even as she foretold a terrible future.

Sarah Bernhardt, Colette, Eileen Gray, Lina Poletti, Virginia Woolfe , Vita Sackville-West, Romaine Romaine Brooks, Ida Rubinstein, Natalie Barney, Isadora Duncan, Nancy Cunard, Gertrude Stein, Anna Kuliscioff, Rina Faccio and Radclyffe Hall are some of the characters who lived in the late nineteenth century / early twentieth century who appear in the vignettes woven together to form this novel.

This book by Selby Wynn Schwartz was long listed for the 2022 Booker prize.

It is on the short list for the James Tait Black award for 2023.

Interview with Selby Wynn Schwartz about the book, After Soppho.

Review in The Guardian 20 July 2022 - After Sappho