Illuminations

by Maureen Duffy

Hetty Dearden has taken early retirement after an unhappy affair with the male head of the history department at the college at which she lectured. She is asked to attend a conference in German, where the subject is to be Europe: Past and Present. Whilst researching, she comes across an intriguing letter from an eight-century nun, Tetta, who had also made her way to Germany — in her case, in search of her aunt who had disappeared some ten years before, and to take up her new position as the head of a religious foundation in the untamed Europe of Charlemagne. There, she has immense influence not only within her own church and order but also in court.

Hetty is drawn into a love affair with a young German woman and, in her turn, is thus brought closer to the frightening underworld of political dissent in a Europe which has only recently begun to reject the codes and systems of the Cold War. Hetty’s adventures develop in parallel to those of her predecessor, and past and present intertwine, throwing light upon each other. Themes range from female sexuality to politics, power, and religion while the idea of Europe itself is woven into the dual plot.

Genres: British Literature, Fiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Maureen Patricia Duffy was a British novelist, poet, playwright, nonfiction author and activist.

Duffy's work often used Freudian ideas and Greek mythology as frameworks. Her writing was distinctive for its use of contrasting voices, or streams of consciousness, often including the perspectives of outsiders. Her novels have been linked to a European tradition of literature which explores reality through the use of language and questioning, rather than through traditional linear narrative. James Joyce in particular, and Modernism in general, are significant influences on her fiction, as is Joyce Cary.

Duffy, with author and activist Brigid Brophy, Michael Levey and two others founded the Writers' Action Group in 1972, which gained more than 700 author members. Their campaign for Public Lending Right (annual payments to authors based on public-library loans of their books) succeeded legally in 1979 after support for it at the 1978 TUC conference. She joined a delegation to meet Prime Minister James Callaghan in 1977. She remained an authority on copyright, intellectual property law and secondary author rights.

Abridged from Wikipedia