In A State of Siege, Janet Frame brings her signature playfulness to paint a thrilling psychological portrait. After the death of her invalid mother, Malfred Signal, a retired New Zealand art teacher, leaves her birthplace in the south for a beach cottage on a sub-tropical island in the north. Freed from endless lessons on still life and the dominating presence of her family, she hopes at last to be alone with nature and the ‘room two inches behind the eyes’. But the solitude she has sought mocks her with echoes of her past, when, one stormy night, an intruder pounds ceaselessly and inexplicably on her door. Propulsive yet poignant, A State of Siege is a mesmerizing exploration of the artistic process, of selfhood and loneliness, and of death and its counterpart: the need to survive, to live.
‘Intensely personal, her writing is always spiralling in on itself, towards the condition of myth, and yet it nails the moment, pins down experiences so fleeting that others would never grasp them. What eludes ordinary language, she can capture in the extraordinary argot of her imagination.’
— Hilary Mantel
‘She is a singular writer. No one is quite like her.’
— Eleanor Catton, author of Birnam Wood
‘Janet Frame is a revelation, a genius, who also feels like a long lost friend, an intimate hero. A State of Siege hits you like lightning, it is a painterly masterpiece which makes you see the world anew. Nowhere else have I read such a vivid description of a woman alone in our strange and unforgiving universe. Everyone must read her.’
— Camilla Grudova, author of Children of Paradise
‘Frame achieved that supremely difficult task of finding a voice so natural it feels almost as if it were not written.’
— Jane Campion, Guardian
