Laura

A strange and compelling tale of love and a powerful crystal worldWhile working for his uncle, Alexis Hartz is introduced to Laura who shares his scientific interests, and in particular his fascination for crystals. To his amazement Laura has discovered a way to enter this alluring world and together they travel the vast and glittering landscape. But it cannot last forever. Its symbolist exploration of young love ... is endearingly eccentric. --The TimesCracked geodes. Circular waterfalls. Eskimos on sleds crossing polar seas. An extraordinary visual experience in the form of an impossible love story that consistently defies its own description. A meditation on beauty told through a fascination with form. --Janice Kerbel, FriezeGeorg Sand was born Amandine-Aurore Lucile Dupin in Paris in 1804 and brought up at Nohant, her grandmother's country home. In 1822 Sand married Baron Casimir Dudevant but left him and their disastrous marriage to seek a better life in Paris. Her most famous novels portray the struggles of women against social constraints, especially marriage. Legendary for her numerous love affairs with such prominent figures as Prosper Merimee, Alfred de Musset and Frederic Chopin, Sand was also a celebrated writer whose works influenced Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Flaubert and Proust.

While working in a small geological museum, Alexis Hartz meets his cousin Laura, who has discovered a way to enter a geode. Travelling through a vast and glittering landscape of brilliant crystals, Alexis passionately falls in love with Laura, but, when they return to the ordinary world, only friendship remains. He yearns for the perfect world of the crystals, and returning there becomes a perilous obsession. But is the crystal world as real as it seems or is his mind playing tricks on him? Written in 1864 and published in a new translation by Sue Dyson, this little-known work by George Sand is a fantastical novel, in the truest sense of the word: a strange and compelling tale with echoes of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Conan Doyle's Lost World and Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials.