After Sappho is a project of both imagination and intimacy, but also of significant research. Schwartz's protagonists are all real people, but she has captured the essence of their lives and identities by means of what she describes as 'speculative biographies'. One of the beauties of this strange, spellbinding novel - other, that is, than the dreamlike, pellucid writing - is this merging of fact and fiction, historical record and artistic vision.--Lucy Scholes "The Telegraph" A highly original, practically uncategorisable novel... Sarah Bernhardt, Virginia Woolf, the Italian writer and lesbian Lina Poletti, plus a host of other lesser-known women who pushed against the conventions of the time -- all are given fresh life in this entrancing choric collage of a novel which seems to speak both in one voice and in multitudes all at the same time... I loved it.--Claire Allfree "Daily Mail" [A] brilliant debut novel... The collective first-person "we" narrator--a Greek chorus devoted to the female poet Sappho--weaves the stories of writers, painters, and performers who, like Sappho, are attracted to women and are determined to become their authentic selves through art.... As the chorus narrates, 'we were plunged back into a history we had barely survived the first time.' Schwartz's account of what happens next as the central characters resist oppression speaks volumes on their efforts, and she contributes her own work of art with this irresistible narrative. Schwartz breathes an astonishing sense of life into her timeless characters.--Publishers Weekly, starred review