A Time to Be Born, Paperback

Dawn Powell’s dazzling tale of ambition, betrayal and romantic chaos, introduced by Marlowe Granados.

Amanda Keeler is a bestselling novelist, famed for her martini-soaked parties. It’s a glamorous life, paid for in full by marriage to a tedious, teeth-grinding newspaper tycoon.

When a meek friend from her provincial past arrives in Manhattan, Amanda plots to use her as cover for an affair—until she realises that they have both fallen for the same man.

Sophisticated, scandalous and acidly funny, this is a portrait of a woman determined to have everything, even if it costs the one thing she never meant to gamble: her heart.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.

Dawn Powell (1896–1965) was a novelist and playwright known for her satires of New York’s cultural and literary circles. Born in Mount Gilead, Ohio, she endured a tumultuous childhood before running away at thirteen to live with an aunt who encouraged her writing aspirations. After graduating from Lake Erie College, Powell moved to New York City, immersing herself in the bohemian atmosphere of Greenwich Village.

She gained early recognition for her witty pieces in The New Yorker and Esquire, and in 1939 became a Scribner author, sharing the legendary editor Maxwell Perkins with Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Although Powell enjoyed a devoted circle of admirers, her work drifted into obscurity after her death. Interest in her novels was later revived by the tireless work of Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Tim Page, executor of her estate, and also through Gore Vidal’s influential appraisal in The New York Review of Books.

‘A fascinating study of New York’s power society’ Hernan Diaz, author of Trust

‘Among the greatest writers of her time’ Andrew O’Hagan, author of Caledonian Road