Between the Acts

A classic of British literature. From the author of “Mrs Dalloway,” “Orlando,” and “To the Lighthouse.”

Virginia Woolf is one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century. Before you is the writer’s most lyrical and candid work!

“Between the Acts,” Virginia Woolf’s last novel, serves as a kind of summary of her entire body of work, analyzing her favorite themes and motifs.

On a June day in 1939 at the Oliver family estate, household members and villagers gather. Unexpected guests arrive, and the performance begins—the one for which everyone is gathered. On an amateur stage, episodes from English history—from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the war—are staged. But the play is interrupted by long pauses, rearrangements of the set, and costume changes, by a struggle with a stubborn gramophone and a downpour. And then the viewers become the heroes of the novel: they talk and drink tea, experience small quarrels and big dramas, search for themselves in a world collapsing before their eyes.

Theatrical and real, past and present, distant history and the eve of a new era intertwine in a lyrical and ironic novel that becomes Virginia Woolf’s final act…