Regular readers of The New Criterion do not need a full introduction to Rebecca West (1892–1983). She remains one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. It is best to describe her as a writer—not as a novelist, journalist, art critic, woman of letters, political commentator, or memoirist—because, no matter what genre she took up, the same writerly and worldly sensibility infused virtually every word she composed. She projected her personality in such forceful prose that we still are dealing with its ricochet. Although she believed in an international ideal and in certain basic human rights recognized in the United Nations charter, she stubbornly insisted that Old World clashes between men and women, ethnic rivalries, blood feuds, and nationalistic movements would persist in international relations and as a constituent of the modern psyche. Her magisterial epic, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), is often cited as the best guide to understanding Balkan history—but that is too tepid a claim for a mind that perceived the world itself as Balkanized. Yet West was no grim sibyl. She had a rollicking sense of humor and reveled in both the spirit and the flesh.

This is the woman whom Lorna Gibb portrays in her well-paced biography The Extraordinary Life of Rebecca West. Gibb begins with West’s brilliant father, Charles Fairfield, a first-class journalist with a prison record and a penchant for infidelity. He abandoned his family when Rebecca, born Cicely, was only eight. By her late teens, she had