Book review | The Great Fortune
by Olivia Manning
As a 60th anniversary edition of The Great Fortune by Olivia Manning is published you ask yourself: why read a book published 60 years ago about events that took place 20 years before that?
Read it because while I can think of many examples in English Literature of British women who wrote from the comparative safety of the island 'Home Front', Manning is unique in that she was at the centre of a politically volatile, war-torn Europe, living in turn in Bucharest, Athens, Palestine, Cairo, experiencing the rise of Fascism clashing with Communism, and civilian populations caught in the middle.
Read it because you'll find fascinating echoes of today’s tense atmosphere of lockdown and pandemic, reminding us that crises come and crises go, and throughout it people have to find ways to carry on.
Read it because Manning cast a tart eye over the British overseas community, noting the perils of a colonial mindset, another topic with extra resonance at the moment.
Read it because it's also an intimate portrayal of Olivia's own marriage, long-lasting but inevitably caught up in the clash of the private needs of the individual and the public demands of time and circumstance.
Title: The Great Fortune
Author: Olivia Manning
Imprint: Windmill Books
Published: 30/07/2020
ISBN: 9781786091130
