THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

A SUMMER READING PICK IN THE GUARDIAN, SUNDAY TIMES, THE TIMES, DAILY MAIL, FINANCIAL TIMES AND EVENING STANDARD

'The Greek island of Hydra is the star of this novel about a young woman and a 1960s bohemian community' SUNDAY TIMES, Summer Reading Pick 2020
'Samson summons the vision and the reality in a beguiling, deeply evocative portrait of a vanished era' GUARDIAN, Summer Reading Pick 2020
'It's sleazy, evocative, beautiful and entertaining' STUART TURTON, GUARDIAN, Summer Reading Pick 2020
'Heady armchair escapism ... An impressionistic, intoxicating rush of sensory experience' Sunday Times
'Sublime and immersive ... If you wish you could disappear to a Greek island right now, I highly recommend' JOJO MOYES
'A surefire summer hit ... feels at once like a gift and an escape route' Observer

1960. The world is dancing on the edge of revolution, and nowhere more so than on the Greek island of Hydra, where a circle of poets, painters and musicians live tangled lives, ruled by the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, troubled king and queen of bohemia. Forming within this circle is a triangle: its points the magnetic, destructive writer Axel Jensen, his dazzling wife Marianne Ihlen, and a young Canadian poet named Leonard Cohen.

Into their midst arrives teenage Erica, with little more than a bundle of blank notebooks and her grief for her mother. Settling on the periphery of this circle, she watches, entranced and disquieted, as a paradise unravels.

Burning with the heat and light of Greece, A Theatre for Dreamers is a spellbinding novel about utopian dreams and innocence lost - and the wars waged between men and women on the battlegrounds of genius.


An Observer Fiction Highlight 2020
'Could hardly have come at a better time ... Samson recreates one heady summer there (the Greek island of Hydra) with impeccably ripening prose, all thyme-scented hills and cascading bougainvillea' i paper
'Beautiful' DOLLY ALDERTON
'Delicious' NIGELLA LAWSON
'Intoxicating' Spectator
'Oh my god, this book! I don't have words to convey its brilliance' MARIAN KEYES
'A glorious novel' KATE MOSSE
'If summer was suddenly like a novel, it would be like this one' ANDREW O'HAGAN
'The best book I've read all year' JOANNE HARRIS
'Superb' THOMAS KENEALLY
A SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER (APRIL 2020)