In the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, a shy English spinster seeks to win back the love of the man she jilted eight years before . . .

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Persuasion is Jane Austen's last-completed work, published only after her death in 1817. It embodies many of the same themes and techniques that the author explored in her earlier fiction — while also edging into new artistic terrain: influenced, perhaps, by the dawning Romantic movement. 

 

With its richly emotional, autumnal tone, and its intense attention to the inner life of the protagonist, Persuasion, as the novelist Colm Tóibín puts it, "is a novel filled with shadows and silences." And as such, presents certain challenges for an adaptor. 

 

How do you dramatize a story, where the two central characters spend most of their time trying very hard not to talk to each other?