Pagan Light

A New York Times Book Review Editors'' ChoicePagan Light is mesmerizing. Every detail is compelling. I felt I was reading a family history of a family far more interesting than mine. --Edmund White author of Our Young ManA rich intimate embrace of Capri which was a magnet for artistic renegades and a place of erotic refugeIsolated and arrestingly beautiful the island of Capri has been a refuge for renegade artists and writers fleeing the strictures of conventional society from the time of Augustus who bought the island in 29 BC after defeating Antony and Cleopatra to the early twentieth century when the poet and novelist Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen was in exile there after being charged with corrupting minors to the 1960s when Truman Capote spent time on the island. We also meet the Marquis de Sade Goethe Mark Twain Oscar Wilde Compton Mackenzie Rilke Lenin and Gorky among other astonishingly vivid characters. Grounded in a deep intimacy with Capri and full of captivating anecdotes Jamie James’s Pagan Light tells how a tiny island served as a wildly permissive haven for people―queer criminal sick marginalized and simply crazy―who had nowhere else to go.