Villa E

From the author of Meander, Spiral, Explode, an astounding novel inspired by the collision of Irish designer Eileen Gray and famed Swiss architect Le Corbusier.

Along the glittering coast of southern France, a white villa sits atop an earthen terrace—a site of artistic genius, now subject to bitter dispute. Eileen, a new architect known for her elegant chair designs, poured the concrete herself; she built it as a haven for her and her lover, and called it E-1027. When the hulking Le G, a founder of modernist architecture, laid eyes on the house in 1929, he could see his influence in the sleek lines—and he would not be outdone. Impassioned, he took a paintbrush to the clean, white walls. . . .

Thirty years later, Eileen has not returned to Villa E and Le G has never left—his summers spent aging in a cabin just feet away. Mining the psyches of two brilliant, complex artists and the extraordinary place that bound them, Jane Alison boldly reimagines a now-legendary act of vandalism into a lushly poetic and mesmerizing novel of power, predation, and obsession.

About the Author: Jane Alison is the author of The Love-Artist, The Sisters Antipodes, and the craft book Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative, among other titles. She is a professor of creative writing at the University of Virginia and lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.