Joinson
If the quote in the headline of this post speaks to you—then you will be as interested in this deal announcement as I was. It’s the way British novelist Suzanne Joinson explains the inspiration for her debut, A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar, which Bloomsbury will publish in 2012.
Joinson goes on to say that “The female missionary is often portrayed as a laughable figure, caricatured as straitlaced and repressed. Either that or she is the problematic evangelical enforcement of Western morality onto other cultures. I wanted to write a story that would bring to life the complex, sometimes eccentric motivations of these unusual women, whose journeys led them to immensely distant places. They rejected the marriage pressures of their own society and I wanted to see where that led them, how they lived and how they loved.”
She combines the story of the lady cyclist of the title, who is traveling through Asia in 1923, with the tale of a modern-day Londoner longing for adventure.
Find out more about Joinson on her blog. Read an excerpt from the novel in The Moth. Are you looking forward to this release? Do you enjoy historical novels starring unconventional women?
