Lisa St Aubin De Terán Biography

British novelist, the daughter of an English mother and Guyanese father, born and brought up in London. She settled for seven years in the Venezuelan Andes where she managed her husband's sugar plantation and avocado farm, the subject of her first acclaimed novel, The Keepers of the House (1982). In The Slow Train to Milan (1983) she draws on her travels through Italy with a group of Venezuelan exiles. Her lush, highly wrought prose is infused with a South American imagination. Her ability to employ magic realism convincingly is notable in The Tiger (1984). Her other novels include The Bay of Silence (1986), Black Idol (1987), Joanna (1990), and Nocturne (1992), part odyssey, part obsessive love story, set in Italy. Her short stories in The Marble Mountain (1988) reveal the versatility and range of this writer in pieces that range from high gothic to an understated humour. Her other works include The High Place (1985; poems), Off the Rails: Memoirs of a Train Addict (1988), Venice: The Four Seasons (1992), with photographs by Mick Lindberg, and A Valley in Italy: Confessions of a House Addict (1994).