Better Broken Than New

A new memoir by best-selling novelist Lisa St Aubin de Teran (Keepers of the House, The Slow Train to Milan), looking back candidly at her life having retreated from the world to remote Mozambican village.

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Following a successful career as an award-winning, best-selling novelist, in 2004 Lisa St Aubin de Teran retreated to a remote village in northern Mozambique. There she found her own African roots, founded a charity, and confronted new challenges. Much has been written about her life and escapades with a trio of Venezuelan exiles, life on an Andean hacienda, her return to literary fame, and two decades living in a crumbling Umbrian palace. But despite all the media hype about her, she managed to hide much of her actual life.

Now, like the Japanese art of kintsugi, in this new memoir Lisa puts the shattered pieces of her life back together, filling in many of the dramatic, and often scandalous, gaps. While her life has been said to be stranger than fiction, it is fiction that has kept her afloat. This autobiography sets the record straight and shows a writer who for over half a century has enjoyed following her dreams, even when those dreams outdistanced her reach.