Dark Palace

Five years after she came to Geneva full of hope to work for the League of Nations, Edith Campbell Berry has lost much of the idealism of her first years there. It is the 1930s: disarmament talks are going nowhere, war is drawing closer, and neither her marriage nor her work holds her steady any more. Then Ambrose Westwood, the cross-dressing Englishman who was her friend and lover, comes back, and their unconventional bond makes her private life feel full of possibility again. Home leave in Australia shows her how far she has grown from her own country. As the Second World War advances, Edith stays on at the half-empty Palais des Nations with a skeleton staff, trying with her colleagues to keep the League working against forces no goodwill can stop.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Historical, Politics (assigned by AI)

Set in

Switzerland, Australia, 1930s–1940s

Series

Edith Trilogy, book 2 · book 3: Cold Light

First published

2000

Author's age

62 when first published

ISBN

9780091836764 (Random House Australia, Australia)

9780330485463 (Picador, United Kingdom)

9780143790914 (Penguin, Australia)

More

Wikidata