A founding editor of the prestigious publishing house Andre Deutsch, Ltd., Diana Athill takes us on a guided tour through the corridors of literary London, offering a keenly observed, devilishly funny, and always compassionate portrait of the glories and pitfalls of making books.
The book chronicles Athill’s life as an editor in London, from the Second World War to the 80s.
Stet is a must-read for the literarily curious, who will revel in Athill’s portraits of such great literary figures as Jean Rhys, V. S. Naipaul, Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, Mordecai Richler, and others.
“The book was like a rich chocolate cake: Best when consumed in small pieces. Hence it took me sometime to get through the whole book, but it was delicious,” a reviewer commented in goodreads.com.
Spiced with candid observations about the type of people who make brilliant writers and ingenious publishers (and the idiosyncrasies of both), Stet is an invaluable contribution to the literature of literature, and in the words of the Sunday Telegraph, “all would-be authors and editors should have a copy.”
