Fun, witty and sun-soaked – literary cartwheels and seaside capers from the astoundingly brilliant mid-century writer who destroyed her own books.

Great friends, Mimi and Caroline, are off on holiday to a beautiful Italian island. There they find themselves part of an eccentric cast of characters including their debonair host and his mistress, a relentless venture capitalist and a villain in the form of the local dentist. There is also Beetle, with whom Mimi is completely and simply in love. As everyone relaxes into island living and the demands of real life drift away, the holiday hijinks culminate in a very Mediterranean prank – the cutting down of the dentist’s prize lemon tree.

Back in print after many decades, this is a glorious novel by an extraordinary and little-known writer, the inimitable Rosemary Tonks.

'Everyone could do with a bit of Tonks in their lives' Stewart Lee

‘Tonks throws out aphorisms, and scorn, like loose change’ London Review of Books