Eva Figes and her family fled the horror of Nazi Germany when Eva was only six, forced to leave behind them friends, relatives and their housemaid, Edith. Ten years later, Edith suddenly re-emerged in their lives. Having miraculously survived wartime Berlin, she had reluctantly emigrated to hostile, volatile Palestine.
Veering between the comic and tragic, the self-contemptuous and the inspired, Leaving the Atocha Station is a dazzling introduction to one of the smartest, funniest and most audacious writers of a generation
Diana Athill, born in 1917, made her reputation as a writer with the candour of her memoirs. Celebrating her life and writing, this title brings together four of her best-loved memoirs, spanning her very English childhood, her life and loves during World War II, her publishing career at Andre Deutsch, and her reflections on old age.