Wide Sargasso Sea

by Jean Rhys

In Brief

Jean Rhys’s vivid prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s classic charts the descent of the spirited young Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway, first wife of Edward Rochester, to the despairing and deranged Bertha Mason, Jane Eyre’s madwoman in the attic.

Why you should read it

Fractured, hallucinatory and intensely haunting, Wide Sargasso Sea completely reorientates the story of the madwoman in the attic. Jane Eyre will never be the same again.