The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Written in the voice of her life partner, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is a remarkable literary achievement. By turns experimental, insightful, and bitingly satirical, Stein’s great biography is both deeply personal and wide-ranging in its ambition. As Stein recounts her life from the fin de siècle up to the 1930s, she tells the story of the Parisian art scene that featured modernist masters like Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso, the impact of World War I on contemporary France, and her encounters with brilliant literary figures like Ernest Hemingway and Sherwood Anderson.