Orlando

First masculine, then feminine, Orlando is a young sixteenth-century nobleman who gallops through the centuries, from Elizabethan England and imperial Turkey to Virginia Woolfs own time. Will he find happiness with the exotic Russian princess Sasha? Or is the dashing explorer Shelmerdine the ideal man? And what form will Orlando take on the journey a nobleman, traveller, writer? Man or . . . woman? Written for the charismatic, bisexual writer Vita Sackville-West, Orlando is one of Woolfs most popular and accessible novels, a playful mock biography of a chameleon-like historical figure that is both a wry commentary on gender and, in Woolfs own words, a 'writers holiday' that delights in its ambiguity and capriciousness.