Challenge
A novel born from passion and defiance, Challenge is V. Sackville-West's audacious love letter to Violet Trefusis, disguised as an adventure tale. Julian Davenant, a brooding young Englishman, arrives at the fictional Greek island of Herakleion amid political unrest: the islands are seething with revolt against their overlords. But the true revolution here is personal. Julian falls for Eve, a woman bound by society's chains, and the novel becomes a soaring, forbidden romance played out against the drama of uprising and exile. The Greek setting crackles with allegory: the colonized islands straining against their masters becomes the lovers straining against a world that demands they hide. Sackville-West wrote this in Violet's presence, every page infused with the electricity of clandestine desire. The result is neither pure escapism nor straightforward autobiography, but something rarer: a disguised confession that dares its readers to look beneath the surface. For those who know the true history, it's a act of magnificent cheek; for those who don't, it's a swashbuckling romance that somehow aches.
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“This book is yours, my witch. Read it and find your tormented soul, changed and free.””
— V. Sackville-West
“Why do we, every one of us, refute the experience of others, preferring to gain our own? Why do we fight against government? Why do I want to be independent of my father? or the Islands independent of Herakleion? or Herakleion, independent of Greece? What’s this instinct of wanting to stand alone, to be oneself, isolated, free, individual? Why does instinct push us towards individualism, when the great well-being of mankind probably lies in solidarity? when the social system in its most elementary form starts with men clubbing together for comfort and greater safety? No sooner have we achieved our solidarity, our hierarchy, our social system, our civilisation, than we want to get away from it. A vicious circle; the wheel revolves, and brings us back to the same point from which we started.””
— V. Sackville-West
