 Buy
"...a lovely, multilayered memoir, capturing Mitchell's recollections
of his idyllic state of suspended animation..."
-Alida Becker, New York
Times
"Mitchell is a master of sensual detail."
-Amanda Heller, Boston Sunday
Globe
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The Rose Cafe:
Love and War in Corsica
Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007
For nearly nine months in 1962, Mitchell withdrew to the sensuous island of Corsica to work as a dishwasher and fish cleaner at an isolated café on the outskirts of Ile Rousse. The work was not overbearing and he spent most of his time there attempting to unearth stories of inn guests, local resistance fighters, contrabandists, and other questionable characters who frequented the café. These included a regular group of local card players who appeared at the café each night, an odd collection of continental types who had fallen under the island’s spell, a flighty Parisian student who spent her days preening and sunbathing on rocks above the green sea coves, and a gentleman of uncertain origins known locally as “le Baron”, who may or may not have played an important role in the French Resistance, and may or may not have been a forger and head of a smuggling ring.
Nearly forty years later and now an award-winning author, Mitchell recounts this formative sojourn in The Rose Café: Love and War in Corsica. His distinctively polished prose creates a powerful sense of place that offers an insider’s vantage of Corsica and evokes the excitement and wonder of adventure. |
John Hanson Mitchell
