Orlando

Orlando is one of the most unforgettable creations of twentieth-century literature. He emerges as a young man at the court of Queen Elizabeth I and progresses, with breathtaking ease, through three centuries until, switching genders and becoming Lady Orlando, she arrives in the bustle and diversion of the 1920s. For Virginia Woolf, Orlando was more than a fantastic flight of imagination. It was a roman ├á clef, a love letter for her lover, the charismatic, eccentric bisexual Vita Sackville-West. Orlando's journey, from wondrous youth barbed by love, to f├¬ted writer settled in her femininity, explores the nature of gender differences and sexual identity and, written at the height of her career, is one of Woolf's most accessible novels.