The wonderfully titled Despised and Rejected by Rose Allatini is everything we would like a Persephone book to be. It is by a forgotten writer who deserves to be revived, as well as having a number of strong themes: opposition to war, acceptance of homosexuality, tolerance of others, awareness that ‘it is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple, one must be woman-manly or man-womanly’ (Virginia Woolf's A Room of One’s Own). It is also a very well-written novel, and a page-turner. Despised and Rejected was very much ahead of its time in its depiction of gay love and desire, in Antoinette’s ‘crushes’ and slow acceptance that she won’t be able to be in love with a man, in its honest attitude to the war. And it is a book that longs for Britain and Europe to be united. Dennis sees that ‘the roads and railways that had been made throughout Europe to connect one country with another had been torn up to form frontiers and sever the connection.’ He wishes that ‘the barriers of racial hatred and racial envy be swept away; art and civilisation arise once more in place of murder and barbarity.’ Despised and Rejected is brave; and it is balanced, generous, sane and civilised. Despised and Rejected is part of the Persephone Audiobook Collection produced in partnership with Macmillan Collector's Library. Also available as a Persephone Grey, a Persephone Classic and a Persephone eBook. Available wherever you usually get your audiobooks.
