Pagan Light: Dreams of Freedom and Beauty in Capri

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

"Pagan 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 Man

A rich, intimate embrace of Capri, which was a magnet for artistic renegades and a place of erotic refuge

Isolated 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.

Author: Jamie James
Publisher: Picador USA
Published: 03/31/2020
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.00w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781250251145

About the Author
Jamie James is the author of several books of nonfiction, including The Glamour of Strangeness, Rimbaud in Java, and The Snake Charmer, and two novels. He has contributed to The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, and The Atlantic, among other publications, and he previously served as the American arts correspondent for The Times (London). The recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation grant, he has lived in Indonesia since 1999.