At once a subversive autobiography of a mercurial woman and a mesmerizing history of the body as a site of resistance to power."I bite my friends to heal them."—Diogenes the Cynic, c. 350 BCEFrom a Roman amphitheater where 4th century martyrs are fed to wild beasts to the S&M leather bars of New York in the 1970s, this sinuous and illuminating book by novelist and cultural critic Fernanda Eberstadt explore the lives of uncommonly brave men and women—saints,...

Fifteen-year-old Celia Bonnet, nicknamed “Rat,” lives a peaceful life with her mother, Vanessa, a free-spirited local beauty, and Morgan, the nine-year-old orphan they have taken in. Their farmhouse compound, nestled just north of the Spanish Catalan border, is surrounded by artichoke fields and glittering ocean, cliffs where they can spy down on the rich tourists below. But when Vanessa falls for a dangerous new boyfriend, Rat must leave this place she loves.Together with Morgan, ...

“Enchanting . . . Bursting with talent and love of life,” said the Washington Post Book World of Fernanda Eberstadt’s extraordinary first novel, Low Tide. Now her exuberant gifts are even more abundantly evident on a larger scale.Isaac and His Devils tells the story of a boy who throws off sparks of what might be genius—and of his father, a man who has walked away from the possibilities of his own brilliance.Isaac Hooker, from birth to his twenty-se...

In 1998, Fernanda Eberstadt, her husband, and their two small children moved from New York to an area outside Perpignan, France — a city with one of the largest Gypsy populations in Western Europe. Here she found a jealously guarded culture, a society made, in part, of lawlessness and defiance of non-Gypsy norms; and she met MoÏse Espinas, the lead singer of the Gypsy band, Tekameli.As her relationship with the Espinas family developed over the years, progressing from mutual baffle...