Orlando

Virginia Woolf, Tilda Swinton

From Shelf: Historical Fiction

Virginia Woolf's seductive, provocative masterpiece is a whirlwind adventure through time, gender and identity. Introduced by Tilda Swinton

'He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets pealed 'Truth! Truth! Truth!' we have no choice left but confess - he was a woman.'A young man in the court of the ageing Queen Elizabeth I, the beautiful Orlando seems to belong everywhere and nowhere. One morning, Orlando awakens transformed - transported into the eighteenth century, and the body of a woman.One of the twentieth century's defining imaginings of queer identity, Orlando is a book of radical possibilities -boy and girl, past and future, nature and magic, life and history, love and literature. One of the most thrilling love letters in all literature, it trespasses thrillingly over the borders of place, time and self.