About the book: 2019 / "Death of the Heart" - a story of young love and betrayal of innocence - Elizabeth Bowen's most famous book. Orphaned sixteen-year-old Portia, arriving in London, finds herself in a strange world of unspoken words, escaping glances, in an atmosphere that is both exquisitely elegant and deadly stuffy. The embodiment of innocence, Portia unwittingly becomes the force that is destined to scratch the varnished surface of an ideal social life, to show that under the shining facade hide ordinary people, melancholy and weak. Elizabeth Bowen, a classic of British literature, a member of the famous Bloomsbury literary circle, a close friend of Virginia Woolf, became the link between the modernism of the beginning of the century and the psychological sophistication of its second half. Her books combine a keen sense of humor with an insight into the depths of human motives and desires. Death of the Heart is one of the 100 most important British novels in the history of English literature..