ESCAPADE by Evelyn Scott

'People think that in order to give up financial security, one must be intoxicated'

Yet in 1913 twentyone year old Evelyn Scott did exactly that. In the face of her family's severe disapproval and a national scandal, she exiled herself to Brazil with her lover. This fragment of autobiography captures unflinchingly the depression and loneliness that beset her as she spent her peregnancy afraid and self-concious in run-down hotels, brought up a child in the fever-striken village that became her first home and travelled 500 miles across country to settle on a farm, plagued constantly be disease, poverty and alienation. In her brutally honest portrayal of herself as a woman stripped of allure and grace, Evelyn Scott has created the model for the feminist novel.

But there is Brazil itself: dark, silent and oppressively lovely. Its stoical people, its extraordinary wildlife and its breathtaking scenery gave her the will to survive and the anonymity she sought. 'With haiku-clear description of...landscapes and the moods they enscapulate', writes Lisa St Aubin de Teran in hr Introduction, Evelyn Scott evokes an 'almost hallucinatory vision of Brazil'.

Soft-cover (216 pages) Penguin Books, 1987 - first published 1930 Very good condition