“The tender biography of a sickly marmoset that was adopted by Leonard Woolf and became a fixture of Bloomsbury society.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times
“In short, glistening sentences that refract the larger world, Ms. Nunez describes the appealingly eccentric, fiercely intelligent Woolfs during a darkening time.” —The Wall Street Journal
In 1934, a sickly marmoset named Mitz came into the care of Leonard and Virginia Woolf. After nursing her back to health, Leonard was rarely seen without the monkey on his shoulder. Mitz moved with the Woolfs between their homes in London and Sussex. She developed her own special relationships with the family’s cocker spaniels and with the various members of the Woolfs’ circle, including T. S. Eliot and Vita Sackville-West. Mitz also played a vital role in helping the Woolfs escape a close call with Nazis in Germany just before World War II.
Blending letters, diaries, and memoirs, Sigrid Nunez reconstructs Mitz’s life, painting it against the backdrop of Bloomsbury in its twilight years. Tender, affectionate, and filled with humor, this novel offers a striking look at lives shadowed by war, death, and mental illness, as well as the happiness and productivity the creature inspired. A new edition, now with an afterword by Peter Cameron.
