"Olubas draws on Hazzard's fiction, and on an extensive archive of private papers and the memories of surviving friends and colleagues, to create a resonant portrait of an exceptional woman. Olubas shows us the places of Hazzard’s life, of which she wrote with characteristic lyricism: her childhood in Depression-era Sydney; her youth in postwar Hong Kong, New Zealand, and London; her years in New York in the 1950s, working at the United Nations and The New Yorker. Olubas also describes Hazzard’s long marriage to the writer Francis Steegmuller and their deep involvement in postwar Naples and Capri. She traces the complex and intricate processes of self-fashioning that lay behind Hazzard's presence, and shows how her depth of perception and expressive gifts have earned her iconic status. Rare photographs from Hazzard’s collection and elsewhere accompany the text." -- Adapted from jacket.