Lisa St Aubin de Teran – författare

Since the eighteenth century the eccentric and flamboyant Beltran family have ruled their desolate Andean valley. Now they are almost extinct. At seventeen, Lydia Sinclair, newly married to Don Diego Beltran, the last of the line, arrives at the vast decaying Hacienda La Bebella. As her husband retreats into himself, Lydia takes refuge in unearthing his ancestors'' tragic history. Benito, the family''s oldest retainer, relates to her tales of splendour and romance, violence and suffering. From these she weaves a rich gothic tapestry in which the fantastic legends of the past are mingled with the present necessity for survival in a harsh, drought-ridden land.

I am a wanderer: one with a hoarder''s love of houses and things... I am tracing here a memory map of all the places that have stayed with me and, since this is also a map of all the voyages of discovery, this is also the story of the getting to those places.'' In Memory Map, probably her most personal book, Lisa charts a life spent in all corners of the world, from Wimbledon to the Venezuelan Andes, from the Caribbean to Ghana, and confesses to wanderlust and fate as being her chief guides. An itinerant lifestyle creates an unpredictable personal life though and Lisa writes movingly about being the support for three children by three different husbands and also, of the pain of failing to be strong.

I was born in 1934 in a little lost village near San Cristobel de Torondoy eleven months after my brother. Unlike him, who was astonishingly handsome, I was astonishingly ugly. I was covered in black hair from head to foot like some kind of monkey. For some reason my ear-drums burst within days of my birth. The local doctor told my mother ''''This little boy is not going to live, and if he does, he''s going to be daft or half-witted''''. But against all the hopes of the family, it was my brother who died, and I survived.''This extraordinary novel is based on a true story of a revolutionary who was advisor to Castro, friend of President Salvador Allende, and married to a woman who became one of the leaders of the Kurdish rebellion in Iran. There is a poignancy in his life, forever underlined by the leading roles thrown on him - like hoopla rings at a fair. Code-named Otto, he became an enemy of both the KGB and the CIA and all by chance, by a twist of fate, or by someone else''s design. From the mountains of Venezuela, to the streets of Paris, from the heart of Cuba to rain-drenched London, this is a fabulous and picaresque journey of the lives and loves (plenty of those) of an astonishing man.

Following a successful career as an award-winning, best-selling novelist, in 2004 Lisa St Aubin de Terán retreated to a remote village in northern Mozambique. There she found her own African roots, founded a charity, and confronted new challenges. Much has been written about her life and escapades with a trio of Venezuelan exiles, life on an Andean hacienda, her return to literary fame, and two decades living in a crumbling Umbrian palace. But despite all the media hype about her, she managed to hide much of her actual life.

Now, like the Japanese art of kintsugi, in this new memoir Lisa puts the shattered pieces of her life back together, filling in many of the dramatic, and often scandalous, gaps. While her life has been said to be stranger than fiction, it is fiction that has kept her afloat. This autobiography sets the record straight and shows a writer who for over half a century has enjoyed following her dreams, even when those dreams outdistanced her reach.

1783. Rodrigo and Sancho Beltrán came to this Andean valley from Spain and found behind barred windows the beautiful twin sisters who were last in the line of the illustrious conquistador de Labastida. From his deathbed their father had sworn the sisters to spinsterhood and imprisoned them in his house rather than let them debase the ancient name or, worse still, pass on his wealth to local peasants. Spanish and noble, Rodrigo and Sancho married the sisters and the Beltrán dynasty was born - a dynasty that ruled the valley for 200 years and was now returning to the dust.

1955. Lydia Sinclair was scarcely out of school when she fell in love with Don Diego Beltrán and left England behind for her husband''s estate in the Andes. Benito, the family''s oldest retainer, said that through her the valley would not be forgotten: ''Fate has brought you here to us, to chronicle our decline.'' In the night''s stillness he told her of romance and battle, drought and pestilence, splendour and suffering.

The characters in the valley''s tumultuous history rose up before Lydia as if they still roamed the dusty slopes: Admiral Silence who enjoyed no one''s company so decided never to speak again; General Mario who prophesied the ruin of their valley as he secretly decayed from leprosy behind a mask; María Candelaria whose beauty and wildness brought on a massacre of nearly half of the Beltráns; la comadre Matilde, the peasant woman of striking ugliness whom people bribed to stay in their houses because her departure left a sense of ill omen; the aged sisters who sat amidst hoards of china and gambled at cards for their every move. Finally there was Cristóbal Beltrán, who sifted the sand in the hourglass, ageless and all-knowing and indestructable.

Out of the upheaval and decay come a narrative and language astonishing in their fertility.

Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award

To Lizaveta, César remained as much of an enigma after two years of their nomadic exile together as he had that first day in Clapham when he took up his peculiar vigil in her mother''s kitchen and showed no signs of shifting out of her life, ever. ''South America'', this total stranger had pronounced unaccountably and then had fallen silent until hours later when Lisaveta decided to introduce herself. In response to her name he replied, ''No''.

''What do you mean "No"?'' she demanded, but was to remain in the dark on this, as on other vital questions: such as why César''s friends Otto and Elias were on the run and from whom, why she was expected to carry guns on a holiday to Paris, and why there was so thick an atmosphere of mystery about everything when she couldn''t pinpoint the danger. Through her 16-year-old eyes she saw 35-year-old César as old and slightly debauched but strikingly beautiful. His air of dissipated grandeur seemed to disarm almost everyone and she marvelled how even in London he was treated like some kind of protected species or listed building. ''My friends are waiting for a bullet,'' César told her, ''they don''t shoot people like me.''

From London the now indivisible foursome drift southwards from Paris to Milan and back - stopping in Bologna, Grenoble and Venice - wherever the slow train takes them. They live like divine fugitives, resplendent in silks and Mercedes one month, warding off starvation the next. The danger for Otto and Elias is constant and palpable. For all of them, tension circumscribes an almost flamboyant kind of lassitude.

Lisa St Aubin de Terán''s first novel, Keepers of the House, introduced a writer of rare virtuosity. She has more than fulfilled the promise of that remarkable début in this unusual and captivating odyssey.

Winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize

The servants said that even the waters of the Orinoco obeyed Misia Schmutter,

the white-haired old lady, so proud of her Prussian ancestry, who treated

the world like her slave. She had seen a glint of her own ruthlessness in her

grandson Lucien''s eye. Worshipping and torturing him by turns she cultivated

in him a terrible understanding of tyranny and the true nature of power. She

passed on to him a love of beauty and science and of roulette.

Even after her death ''the Empress of the Orinoco'' would hold Lucien in a

relentless stranglehold, clinging like a tiger to his back, a demon people could

glimpse through Lucien''s gentleness. Misia Schmutter would be there as he set

out from the plains of San Fernando de Apure for the extraordinary journeys of

his life, first to Caracas where he lived in sumptuous excess in a gothic palace,

crowded with the human vultures who took advantage of his almost demented

generosity. Later, when he was declared a public menace and locked away,

tales of his extravagance would continue to flourish, as would the legend of his

extraordinary luck at gambling.

Like a pilgrim to a shrine, Lucien made his way to the German fatherland which

Misia Schmutter had so passionately described to him, to find the Nazis on

the verge of havoc. He returned to his beloved Venezuela, to be imprisoned for

treason and escape through the forest. Arrested and convicted for a murder he

had not committed.

It all appears innocent enough: a handsome couple in their thirties - she an actress, he a successful graphic designer - revisiting Sestri Levante on the Italian Riviera where they once spent their honeymoon. But it is not at all innocent. The couple have been driven here by paranoia - by a slow dread of what will happen to the two of them and to their daughters if anyone finds out about their baby Amadeo, whose identity, and even whose existence, is at the heart of the schizophrenic illness from which Rosalind has long suffered. Two people hiding the world from each other, Rosalind and William cannot escape the chilling truth that lies at the centre of Lisa St Aubin de Terán''s compelling novel.

The resort of Sestri Levante has twin, Janus-facing bays: one which Hans Christian Andersen called the Bay of Fairytales and another which the local people have long called the Bay of Silence. It is to the Bay of Silence that Rosalind now retraces her steps - to the spot where she first encountered the exotic golden stranger Angelo who was to play such a seductive and haunting role on her honeymoon and in her marriage. Both she and her husband independently try to make sense of the tragic events which have engulfed their lives. They each try to analyse the pressure placed on their marriage - which has allowed distressing events to be forgotten and self-delusion to herald the unthinkable.

In her fourth novel, Lisa St Aubin de Terán creates an atmosphere which is profoundly unsettling. She weaves an escalating story of tension and human drama, combining the depth of character alaysis which was so admired in The Tiger, with a striking new sense of pace and menace.