A FRAGMENTED MEMOIR
By Lisa St Aubin de Terán
Better Broken Than New: A Fragmented Memoir by Lisa St Aubin de Terán will be published in hardback and ebook editions on 24 January 2024.
ISBN 978-1-914278-12-9 (hardcover), 326pp, 6″ x 9″ (£19.95, €22.95, $24.95)
ISBN 978-1-914278-14-3 (ebook) (£4.99, €5.99, $6.99)
“One of the most bonkers life stories I’ve read… It is a riveting read, one that conjures up a lost world of international bohemianism.” (Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Times)
“Vastly entertaining – and shocking.” (Catherine Taylor, Financial Times)
Following a successful writing career – which saw the Anglo-Guyanese London-born author publish 20 works of fiction, short stories and nonfiction, including the bestselling Keepers of the House, Hacienda and The Slow Train to Milan – Lisa St Aubin de Terán retreated to a remote village in northern Mozambique: there she found her own African roots, founded a charity (The Terán Foundation) and confronted new challenges.
Much has been written about Lisa’s life and escapades with a trio of Venezuelan exiles, life on an Andean hacienda, her return to literary fame, and two decades living in a crumbling Umbrian palace. But despite all the attention surrounding her, she managed to hide much of her actual life.
Now, like the Japanese art of kintsugi, in this new memoir Lisa puts the shattered pieces of her life back together, filling in many of the dramatic, and often scandalous, gaps. While her life has been said to be stranger than fiction, it is fiction that has kept her afloat. This autobiography sets the record straight and shows a writer who for over half a century has enjoyed following her dreams, even when those dreams outdistanced her reach.
Lisa St Aubin de Terán, said:
“From 2004 to 2015, I was content to drift along by the Indian Ocean, on the edge of a mud hut village, raising hopes and lowering fevers, gardening, and writing my books. Then a near-death experience changed me. After the attack I realised that despite all my past publicity, many of the events that had shaped me were still secret and many of my own secrets were still untold.
So, I sat down to write Better Broken than New, a fragmented memoir to set the record straight and fill in the gaps. And in 2020 I finally reached out to my support network in London only to find that it had slipped away.
Galvanised by a particularly brutal cyclone taking the roof off the house I was living in, I eventually made it back to the UK. And now, based on a houseboat on the River Thames, I am on the brink of re launching my career with three new books and dozens of short stories and I am as excited this time around as I was when my first novel was accepted. Much as I loved living in Africa and finding my own African roots, I knew I was missing the literary world and meeting my readers, but I didn’t realise quite how much that was until I jumped back in.”
Better Broken Than New is available from Gazelle Book Services, and all good booksellers and non-line retailers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones etc.)
For more information, interview requests or review copies, contact: Midas PR, info@midaspr.co.uk, Tel: 020 7361 7860
For sales information, contact Harbour Publisher Services (harbourpubservices@gmail.com), Tel: 07733 104992
Better Broken Than New is being published alongside new editions of Lisa’s first four books: Keepers of the House, The Slow Train to Milan, The Tiger, The Bay of Silence
