The Ladybird
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Overview
An English aristocrat, a wounded enemy officer and a family thimble marked with a ladybird crest form the charged centre of this psychologically focused wartime novella. In the aftermath of the First World War, Lady Daphne Apsley is struggling with illness, emotional instability and a marriage altered by conflict. Her growing connection with Count Johann Dionys Psanek, a Bohemian prisoner held in England, brings desire into uneasy contact with duty, class and national allegiance. Rather than treating war as a distant historical backdrop, the narrative traces its pressure upon the body, the mind and intimate relationships. Daphne's visits and her sewing of shirts for the imprisoned officer create a restrained framework for questions of spiritual and physical love. The prisoner-and-captor context complicates every exchange, while humanitarian ideals contend with authority, anger and darker forms of power. Marriage offers no simple refuge: the return of Daphne's husband from captivity has left their relationship profoundly changed. Across hospital, internment camp and country-estate settings, private distress remains inseparable from the social order surrounding it. The sewing motif gives tangible form to connections that cross boundaries of rank and nationality, while the novella's psychological concentration keeps attention fixed on unstable feeling, divided loyalties and the lingering damage of war. This is historical fiction concerned less with battlefield action than with what conflict leaves behind in desire, illness and domestic life. This book was out of print for decades and is now republished by Alpha Editions. It has been restored for today's and future generations. This edition is not just a reprint - it's a collector's item and a cultural treasure.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9789377780593
- ISBN-10: 9377780594
- Publisher: Alpha Edition
- Publish Date: December 2026
- Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.16 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.23 pounds
- Page Count: 68
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