Quake

“Quake, never published while Mrosovsky was alive, is witty, illuminating and replete with life, an extraordinary one-off performance to savor before the theatre went dark … For Olivia and her author there are no taboos: sex is an absolute good, described in epicurean detail as if it is delicious food for the hungry … Misunderstood and undervalued by publishers of the eighties and nineties, Quake is finally published now in an era when it can be seen for what it is: one of the few works of art that perfectly capture the bliss and tragedy of those phosphorescent years.”

—Maggie Gee, From the Foreword

—Isabel Fonseca, Times Literary Supplement

—Amanda Mitchison, The Independent

Kitty Mrosovsky (1946-1995) was born in England, but spent her childhood in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Her father, who was Russian-Italian, was a close friend of Vladimir Nabokov’s from their student days together at Cambridge. After earning a first-class honours degree and a BPhil in comparative literature from Somerville College, Oxford, Mrosovsky worked as a book reviewer, an Open University tutor, and a theatre critic. Her acclaimed translation of Flaubert’s The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1980) was later reissued as a Penguin Classic, and her first novel, Hydra (1985), received similarly enthusiastic applause. She died at the age of 48.

Maggie Gee is a fellow alumnus of Somerville College, Oxford, and was a friend of Kitty Mrosovsky. She has published seventeen books, including a memoir, My Animal Life. Her novels include Blood (2019), Virginia Woolf in Manhattan (2014), and the climate change fictions Where Are the Snows (1990), The Ice People (1997), and The Flood (2004). Her novel The White Family (2002) was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize and the International Dublin Impac Award. Her books have been translated into over 15 languages. She is a Professor Emeritus of Bath Spa University.

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