The Red Dancer opens in 1895 when, as a young woman in Amsterdam, Margaretha Zelle answers a lonely-hearts advertisement placed by a soldier twice her age in a local newspaper. But her marriage to Captain McLeod of the Dutch army ends in tragedy and acrimony and she leaves their posting in Indonesia. Heading for Paris, she adopts the stage name Mata Hari - 'Eye of the Morning' - and reinvents herself as an exotic dancer. Mata Hari's fame soon spreads throughout the cabarets and theatres of Europe and, as the major powers lurch towards inevitable conflict, she begins to attract the attention of numerous admirers - many of whom are officers, all too keen to share their secrets with a woman of notorious intrigue and allure. Set against the dramatically imagined backdrop of pre-War Europe, Richard Skinner's novel weaves interlinking chapters of fiction and non-fiction to conjure up the life, loves and tragic end of a woman who continues to fascinate almost a century on from her death.

Red Dancer

History

Richard Skinner

Military

Faber Faber Inc

<p>'This is the only book from the Second World War comparable with the first-war narratives of Sassoon, Blunden or Graves . . . When the battle of El Alamein began, the poet Keith Douglas was in Cairo with Divisional HQ. Eager not to miss the action, he took a truck and, against orders, drove to re-join his regiment. He served as a tank commander throughout the whole of the allied advance across North Africa, and Alamein to Zem Zem (1946) is his story. Boyishness and inexperience give it flash-bulb immediacy . . . Scenes of unforgettable pity and terror unfold . . . Everything, from flowers carpeting the desert in winter to vanquished enemies, is seen with a poet's eye and the generosity of youth.' John Carey, Guardian This Faber Finds edition of Keith Douglas's classic work - originally published two years after his death in Normandy in 1944 - includes a new preface by the novelist Richard Skinner.</p>

Alamein to Zem Zem

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Faber&Faber

In language that is both precise and strange, Skinner's poems tip certainties on their heads, making familiar objects in the world unfamiliar: a mountain is not what it seems, a skull contains a universe. Alongside this process of `making-strange' lies a deep connection with sound, color, temperature, and scent that brings the poems fully to life. These poems engage with form - the cento, the cinquain, the unrhymed sonnet, cut-ups and free verse - in enigmatic, other-worldy ways that constantly surprise and please.

The Malvern Aviator

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Dufour Editions In

Invocations: Calling on the God in All: v. 1

Religion & Spirituality

Christian Books & Bibles

Wild Goose Publications

Kadife Bey

Kara Plak Yayinlari

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Books by Richard Skinner