The Price of Dreams

By Margherita Giacobino

Margherita Giacobino’s book is a fictionalised biography/autobiography of Patricia Highsmith.

A lesbian in an era when to be homosexual was to be reviled and discriminated against, and made to feel guilty and ashamed, Patricia Highsmith struggled with her sexual identity in this social context, and the book fruitfully explores how this might have contributed to her creative output.

The title is a reference to Patricia Highsmith’s second novel The Price of Salt, a lesbian romance originally published under a pseudonym after it was rejected by the publisher of her first novel. It was not until 1990 that she agreed to its reissue under her own name with the new title Carol.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dedalus
• Release date: Aug 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781912868186

Margherita Giacobino

Margherita Giacobino, born in 1952, lives in Turin. She is a writer, journalist and translator. She has translated, among others, Emily Bronte, Gustave Flaubert, Margaret Atwood, Dorothy Allison and Audre Lorde. She published her first novel Un'Americana a Parigi written under the pseudonym of Elinor Rigby in 1993. Portrait of a Family with a Fat Daughter, published in Italy in 2015, is the first novel by Margherita Giacobino to be translated into English. It was shortlisted for the Italian Prose Award 2019. Dedalus published her next novel, which is a fictionalised account of the life of Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Dreams, in 2020, followed in 2024 by The Ridiculous Age. The film rights of The Ridiculous Age have been sold and it is currently being filmed.