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THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

A SUMMER READING PICK IN THE GUARDIAN, SUNDAY TIMES, THE TIMES, DAILY MAIL, FINANCIAL TIMES AND EVENING STANDARD

The Greek island of Hydra is the star of this novel about a young woman and a 1960s bohemian community SUNDAY TIMES, Summer Reading Pick 2020
Samson summons the vision and the reality in a beguiling, deeply evocative portrait of a vanished era GUARDIAN, Summer Reading Pick 2020
It s sleazy, evocative, beautiful and entertaining STUART TURTON, GUARDIAN, Summer Reading Pick 2020
Heady armchair escapism … An impressionistic, intoxicating rush of sensory experience Sunday Times
Sublime and immersive … If you wish you could disappear to a Greek island right now, I highly recommend JOJO MOYES
A surefire summer hit … feels at once like a gift and an escape route Observer

1960. The world is dancing on the edge of revolution, and nowhere more so than on the Greek island of Hydra, where a circle of poets, painters and musicians live tangled lives, ruled by the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, troubled king and queen of bohemia. Forming within this circle is a triangle: its points the magnetic, destructive writer Axel Jensen, his dazzling wife Marianne Ihlen, and a young Canadian poet named Leonard Cohen.

Into their midst arrives teenage Erica, with little more than a bundle of blank notebooks and her grief for her mother. Settling on the periphery of this circle, she watches, entranced and disquieted, as a paradise unravels.

Burning with the heat and light of Greece, A Theatre for Dreamers is a spellbinding novel about utopian dreams and innocence lost – and the wars waged between men and women on the battlegrounds of genius.

An Observer Fiction Highlight 2020
Could hardly have come at a better time … Samson recreates one heady summer there (the Greek island of Hydra) with impeccably ripening prose, all thyme-scented hills and cascading bougainvillea i paper
Beautiful DOLLY ALDERTON
Delicious NIGELLA LAWSON
Intoxicating Spectator
Oh my god, this book! I don t have words to convey its brilliance MARIAN KEYES
A glorious novel KATE MOSSE
If summer was suddenly like a novel, it would be like this one ANDREW O HAGAN
The best book I ve read all year JOANNE HARRIS
Superb THOMAS KENEALLY
A SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER (APRIL 2020)