SHORTLISTED FOR THE AMERICAN LIBRARY IN PARIS BOOK AWARD 2025





'Strikingly accomplished . . . utterly compelling.' SUNDAY TIMES

'A masterpiece of biography.' DAILY TELEGRAPH

'A total joy to read.' SARAH BAKEWELL



'I feel like I've been waiting for this book my whole life.' SHEILA HETI



Admirers called her a genius, sceptics a charlatan.





Gertrude Stein remains one of the most confounding - and contested - writers of the twentieth century. The host of glamorous salons at 27 rue de Fleurus, brushing shoulders with Picasso and Hemingway in her long brown robe, Stein never ceased plotting her own legacy. She would be known as the literary innovator of her time. And her enigmatic partner, Alice B. Toklas, would make sure of it.



A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE GUARDIAN THE SPECTATOR THE TELEGRAPH THE INDEPENDENT ARTFORUM WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD NPR'S FRESH AIR



Francesca Wade is the author of Square Haunting, which was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize. She has received fellowships from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, the Leon Levy Center for Biography and the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and her work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, Granta, Paris Review and other places. She lives in London.