The Orchid House

After many years out of print this enticing and hugely autobiographical novel is back. Its new and incisive introduction by the Dominican scholar Schuyler Esprit casts a fresh and contemporary eye on Allfrey’s life and work. First published in 1953, it was republished in 1982 as a Virago Modern Classic. Three white sisters return to their Caribbean island home to find their family living in poverty and mental anguish. Each sister responds to the family’s plight in different ways — seeking change through romance or politics or money. The Orchid House describes a colonial society in decay as seen through the (usually) loyal eyes of the sisters’ childhood nurse, Lally: “Beauty and disease, beauty and sickness, beauty and horror: that was the island.”