Autobiography: writers Books

Book Synopsis''Little Matters they are to be sure, but highly important.''Letter-writing was something of an addiction for young women of Jane Austen''s time and social position, and Austen''s letters have a freedom and familiarity that only intimate writing can convey. Wiser than her critics, who were disappointed that her correspondence dwelt on gossip and the minutiae of everyday living, Austen understood the importance of ''Little Matters'', of the emotional and material details of individual lives shared with friends and family through the medium of the letter. Ironic, acerbic, always entertaining, Jane Austen''s letters are a fascinating record not only of her own day-to-day existence, but of the pleasures and frustrations experienced by women of her social class which are so central to her novels.Vivien Jones''s selection includes very nearly two-thirds of Austen''s surviving correspondence, and her lively introduction and notes set the novelist''s most private writings in their wider culturTrade Review...astute introduction * Karen Joy Fowler, The Independent *

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Book SynopsisPart autobiography, part travelogue, and wholly a tribute to the unspoilt beauty of southern Spain, Gerald Brenan''s South from Granada includes an introduction by Chris Stewart, author of the bestselling Driving Over Lemons, in Penguin Modern Classics.Between 1920 and 1934, Gerald Brenan lived in the remote Spanish village of Yegen and South of Granada depicts his time there, vividly evoking the essence of his rural surroundings and the Spanish way of life before the Civil War. Here he portrays the landscapes, festivals and folk-lore of the Sierra Nevada, the rivalries, romances and courtship rituals, village customs, superstitions and characters. Fascinating details emerge, from cheap brothels to archaeological remains, along with visits from Brenan''s friends from the Bloomsbury group - Lytton Strachey and Virginia Woolf among them. Knowledgeable, elegant and sympathetic, this is a rich account of Spain''s vanished past.Gerald Brenan (1894-1987) was an English writer who spent much of his life in Spain. He is best known for The Spanish Labyrinth, a work of history on the background to the Spanish Civil War and for South From Granada: Seven Years in an Andalusian Village. He was awarded a CBE in 1982, and was much honoured in SpainIf you enjoyed South from Granada, you might like Orwell''s Homage to Catalonia, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.''The best of Brenan''s books: he has a true and proper knowledge of the culture he describes'' Cyril Connolly, Sunday Times''A brilliant interpreter of Spain to the rest of the world'' The Times

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Book SynopsisA moving portrait of the landscape that shaped the life of Laurie Lee, the beloved author of Cider With Rosie ''Before I left the valley I thought everywhere was like this. Then I went away for 40 years and when I came back I realized that nowhere was like this.'' Laurie Lee walked out of his childhood village one summer morning to travel the world, but he was always drawn back to his beloved Slad Valley, eventually returning to make it his home. In this portrait of his Cotswold home, Laurie Lee guides us through its landscapes, and shares memories of his village youth - from his favourite pub to winter skating on the pond, the church through the seasons, local legends, learning the violin and playing jazz records in the privy on a wind-up gramophone. Filled with wry humour and a love of place, Down in the Valley is a writer''s tribute to the landscape that shaped him, and where he found peace.Trade ReviewIt is a fine thing to revisit this writer's landscape and hear his amiable voice in it again. -- Michael Caines * Times Literary Supplement *Down in the Valley is truly evocative of time and place. A beautiful illustration of how, in some way, we are all indelibly influenced by the landscape of our childhood. -- Raynor Winn, author of The Salt Path

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Book SynopsisAn essential read for fans of Muriel Spark - the definitive selection of her correspondence from her disastrous married life in South Africa, through to her experience in post-war London as a struggling writer, and her glittering success as a novelist.

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Book SynopsisA collection of writings by the author of the 2022 Booker Prize-shortlisted Treacle Walker''His work has a symphonic quality unique in fiction'' THE TIMESThe autobiography of one of the most distinct and profound writers we have'GUARDIANIn this rich collection of writings, spanning more than twenty years, Alan Garner, the Booker shortlisted author of Treacle Walker, explores his interest in a dazzling range of subjects; from archaeology, myth and language, to education, literature, film, music and philosophy, as well as mental health and our most profound quest for the spiritual.The Voice That Thunders serves as an early poetic autobiography of one of England''s best-loved but least public writers. These essays chart how, after hearing himself declared dead at the age of six, he went on to become the writer he is today: one drawing on the deep well of a rural working-class childhood and one inspired by a family of craftsmen who instilled in him the passion for excellence and innovation and humour that guides him to this day.Candid and illuminating, The Voice That Thunders is an enchanting collection from one of Britain's greatest living writers.A brilliant collection of essays' INDEPENDENT

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Book SynopsisRobert A. Caro is one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation, whose landmark biographies are widely hailed as masterpieces.This is the captivating account of his life as a writer, describing the sometimes staggering lengths to which he has gone in order to produce his books and offering priceless insights into the craft of non-fiction writing, be it the pursuit of truth, the writer's process, the art of interviewing or the creation of literature.Including several of Caro's most famous speeches and interviews as well as new material, this is the self-portrait of a man who knows the meaning and importance of great story-telling - and, like all his books, is an utterly riveting example of that too.Trade ReviewAnyone trying to write in any form will devour it * Evening Standard *One of the greatest non-fiction works ever written -- Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times, on The Power BrokerIrresistibly readable, an outright masterpiece -- David Sexton, Evening Standard, on The Power BrokerA stupendous achievement … Caro’s style is gripping, indeed hypnotic, and he squeezes every ounce of drama from his remarkable story -- Vernon Bogdanor, Independent, on The Power BrokerI think about Robert Caro and reading The Power Broker back when I was twenty-two years old and just being mesmerized -- Barack Obama on The Power Broker

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Book SynopsisWith an introduction by Margo Jefferson Thursday 28 May 1931. On Whit Monday the sun blazed, making the grass semi-transparent. And space & leisure seemed to lie all about; & I said, not once in an exstasy, but frequently & soberly, This is happiness. Why should I feel now calmer, quieter than ever before? This volume of Virginia Woolf's diary has a slower pace: she is finishing The Waves and wrestling with the shape of her next novel (The Years). These years are marred by the death of many of the people in her circle, including her close friend Lytton Strachey. Woolf also reflects on the political situation in Britain, and the menacing rise of fascism abroad. The diary testifies to the sense of external threat, as well as the tension between her social and her writing life, but as she and Leonard embark on a series of foreign trips she also revels in the discovery of new places and the profound contentment of her marriage.

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Book SynopsisA look at 100 inspiring novels that have left a significant mark on the world of literature and popular culture.Before the novel, the world of books was dominated by scientific tomes, religious tracts and histories of the victorious in war. There had been stories and epic poems from ancient times Homer's Iliad and Odyssey recounted ancient Greece, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was a chivalric romance in Middle English, but it was not until the seventeenth century, when the European middle classes had money and leisure, that anything so frivolous as a novel could be sold for entertainment.Colin Salter traces the evolution of the novel from the earliest examples through to the postmodernist best-sellers of the 21st century. Rather than dwelling too long on the technical nuances of innovative writing style he has amassed 100 of the greatest novel writers and chosen their most significant work.For writers such as Herman Melville, James Joyce or Harper Lee the decision is not a diffi

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Book SynopsisTolstoy's passionate and iconoclastic writings--on issues of faith, immortality, freedom, violence, and morality--reflect his intellectual search for truth and a religion firmly grounded in reality. The selection includes 'A Confession,' 'Religion and Morality,' 'What Is Religion, and of What Does Its Essence Consist?,' and 'The Law of Love and the Law of Violence.'For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.Table of ContentsA Confession and Other Religious Writings IntroductionA ConfessionWhat Is Religion and Of What Does Its Essence Consist?Religion and MoralityThe Law of Love and the Law of ViolenceExplanatory Notes

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Book SynopsisRichard Wright's memoir of his childhood as a young black boy in the American south of the 1920s and 30s is a stark depiction of African-American life and a powerful exploration of racial tension.‘A compelling indictment of life in the Deep South between the wars’ Daily Telegraph At four years old, Richard Wright set fire to his home in a moment of boredom; at five his father deserted the family; by six Richard was - temporarily - an alcoholic. It was in saloons, railroad yards and streets that he learned the facts about life, about fear, hunger and hatred, while his mother's long illness taught him about suffering. In a world of white hostility and subjugation it would be his love of books and pursuit of knowledge that would propel him to follow his dream of justice and opportunity in the north.A chronicle of coming of age under the racial prejudices of the American south, as much the story of a writer finding his voice, Black Boy remains one of the great, impassioned memoirs of the twentieth century.

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Book SynopsisWilliam Henry Davies was born in a pub and learnt early in life to rely on his wits and his fists - and to drink. Around the turn of the century, when he was twenty-two, his restless spirit of adventure led him to set off for America, and he worked around the country taking casual jobs where he could, thieving and begging where he couldn't. His experiences were richly coloured by the bullies, tricksters, and fellow-adventurers he encountered - New Haven Baldy, Wee Shorty, The Indian Kid, and English Harry, to name but a few. He was thrown into prison in Michigan, beaten up in New Orleans, witnessed a lynching in Tennessee, and got drunk pretty well everywhere. A harrowing accident forced him to return to England and the seedy world of doss-houses and down-and-outs like Boozy Bob and Irish Tim. When George Bernard Shaw first read the Autobiography in manuscript, he was stunned by the raw power of its unvarnished narrative. It was his enthusiasm, expressed in the Preface, that ensured the initial success of a book now regarded as a classic.Trade Review"I have read it through from beginning to end and would have read more had there been any more to read." George Bernard Shaw "He found the people generous and the climate pleasant; he considers the United States an ideal place for tramps." The New York Times

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Book Synopsis The comprehensive collection of letters spanning the adult life of one of the world’s greatest storytellers, now revised and expanded to include more than 150 previously unseen letters, with revealing new insights into The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. Trade Review‘The closest we can get to an actual autobiography … reveals new insights into the mind of one of England’s greatest storytellers’ Telegraph ‘These revised and amplified letters are an absolute treat’ Sunday Times ‘This is a terrific book … the letters simply glow with warmth, interest and enthusiasm’ Private Eye ‘These letters provide an intriguing new glimpse into Tolkien’s life and work, allowing us to hear from one of the world’s best-loved authors in his own voice’ The National Archives

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Book SynopsisSo wise and so well done. It made me wish it were much longer than it is' Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieFrom the award-winning author of Five Star Billionaire and We, The Survivors comes a whirlwind personal history of modern Asia, as told through his Malaysian and Chinese heritage.If we are lucky we will find writing that grips us with its vitality, beauty and significance Strangers on a Pier is like that' Deborah LevyIn Strangers on a Pier, acclaimed author Tash Aw explores the panoramic cultural vitality of modern Asia through his own complicated family story of migration and adaptation, which is reflected in his own face. From a taxi ride in present-day Bangkok, to eating Kentucky Fried Chicken in 1980s Kuala Lumpur, to his grandfathers'' treacherous boat journeys to Malaysia from mainland China in the 1920s, Aw weaves together stories of insiders and outsiders, images from rural villages to megacity night clubs, and voices in a dizzying variety of languages, dialects, and slangs, to create an intricate and astoundingly vivid portrait of a place caught between the fast-approaching future and a past that won''t let go.Trade Review‘Strangers on a Pier offer a unique and thought-provoking perspective of a life lived out in interesting times, places, and circumstances’ Carl Logan, Midwest Book Review ‘Aw always writes well, but this small volume is particularly lyrical. The extended essay format suits him: long enough for some structure – the chronology is not linear, and he bounces from story to social commentary to introspection – and to explore issues in depth, while short enough for immediacy. He covers a tremendous amount of ground … Strangers on a Pier is a wealth of pithy observation’ Peter Gordon, Asian Review of Books Aw digs deep into the meaning of this move, the meaning of Chineseness in Malaysia, the meaning of inherited immigrant markings, and the meaning of leaving the immigrant perspective behind. He charts what it looks like to reprise history, to move for greater opportunity and more education, leaving behind those with less money and shedding the ancestral memory and choreography of poverty’ Sharrona Pearl, Public Books

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Book SynopsisLudwig Bemelmans came to the California home of famed interior decorator Elsie de Wolfe, Lady Mendl, for cocktails. By the end of the night, he was firmly established as a member of the family: given a bedroom in their sumptuous house, invitations to the most outrageous parties in Hollywood, and the friendship of the larger-than-life woman known to her closest friends simply as 'Mother'. With hilarity and mischief, Bemelmans lifts the curtain on a bygone world of extravagance and eccentricity, where the parties are held in circus tents and populated by ravishing movie stars. To the One I Love the Best is a luminous painting of life's oddities and a touching tribute to a fabulously funny woman.Trade Review"This book is a must." -- The New York Times"An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein."--Kirkus Reviews“Delightful... It was Bemelmans’ privilege to have known [Lady Mendl] and it’s ours to have his gorgeous recollections.” --Sunday Times “A beautiful, fun and emotion-filled piece of social history.” --Irish Independent “The charm of To the One I Love the Best lies in the peerless combination of author and subject.” --Paris Review "About a third of the way through the book I decided that Lady Mendl, was one of the great comic creations in the history of literature . . . as airy as a soufflé, full of the sun and smells of California . . . Madeline for grown ups."--The Spectator “Reissued treasure.” --The Gloss

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Book Synopsis'During certain hours, at certain years in our lives, we see ourselves as remnants from the earlier generations that were destroyed... I think all of our lives have been terribly shaped by what went on before us.'Twenty-five years after leaving his native Sri Lanka for the cool winters of Ontario, a chaotic dream of tropical heat and barking dogs pushes Michael Ondaatje to travel back home and revisit a childhood and a family he never fully understood. Along with his siblings and children, Ondaatje gathers rumours, anecdotes, poems, records and memories to piece together this fragmented portrayal of his family's past, his father's destructive alcoholism and the colourful stories and secrets of ancestors both disgraced and adored throughout centuries of Sri Lankan society.In an exotic, evocative portrait of the heat, wildlife, sounds and silences of the Sri Lankan landscape, Ondaatje combines vivid recreations of a privileged, eccentric older generation with a deeply personal reconciliatory journey in which he explores his own ghosts, and how his family's extraordinary history continues to influence his life.Trade ReviewBrightly coloured, sweet and painful, bloody-minded and otherworldly, [this book] achieves the status of legend -- Margaret AtwoodEloquent, oblique, witty, full of light and feeling....Ondaatje's knowledge of the fragility and luck of life is very clear. So, too, is the grace and originality of his prose * New Yorker *Ondaatje has produced a remarkable book....Shimmering through the haze of heat and memory is an impressionistic, sometimes surreal portrait of an exotic time and place now gone, a colonial paradise that had its own rhythms and imperatives * Globe and Mail *A beautiful, luscious book. Michael Ondaatje has depicted his extraordinary family, who delighted in masks and costumes and love affairs that 'rainbowed over marriages' in the kind of language that makes glory of their lives. He has gone on a poet's journey to Sri Lanka (Ceylon), and the reader who travels with him enters a truly magical world -- Maxine Hong KingstonWith a prose style equal to the voluptuousness of [Ondaatje's] subject and a sense of humor never too far away, Running in the Family is sheer reading pleasure * Washington Post *

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Book SynopsisRobert Graves, aged nineteen, left school within a week of the outbreak of World War I, and immediately volunteered with the Royal Welch Fusiliers. His experiences as a junior officer form the heart of this compelling autobiography. Beginning with an ironic overview of his Edwardian childhood, he proceeds to a tongue-in-cheek account of a young poet's life at public school (not helpful to be half-German, but handy to take up boxing), progressing to caricatures of military stereotypes he encounters in training, and the devastating farce of the War itself, the blundering and mismanagement, and the appalling human consequences. Graves's handling of the horrors of war is always deadpan, honest and unadorned. It is wholly in line with his sense of the absurd that his commanding officer should write to inform his parents that he had died of wounds during the battle of the Somme. He soon found that patriotism was meaningless to the men in the trenches; loyalty to comrades alive and dead drove him back to active service though still suffering from shell-shock. Goodbye to All That takes Graves through his convalescence in England, his efforts to protect the poet Siegfried Sassoon, a friend and fellow officer, from the consequences of his public denunciation of the war; marriage to artist and feminist Nancy Nicholson, postwar undergraduate years at Oxford and a decade as a struggling writer with four young children, beset with money problems and neurasthenia. It is written in a spirit of defiance as he prepared to put 'all that' behind him and begin a new life in Majorca with the American poet Laura Riding.Trade ReviewFrom the moment of its first appearance, an established classic. * Observer *

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Book Synopsis''An unforgettable, freewheeling masterclass''Michael Magee, Nero Book Award-winning author of Close to Home ''Electric... It''s a breath of fresh air, in a world of packaged and marketed versions of ourselves, to see raw pain and perseverance''Daily Mirror''Funny, nerve-wracking and utterly compelling''Colin Barrett, Booker Prize-longlisted author of Wild Houses''Extraordinary... A writer with a rare gift. I feel changed by it''Belinda McKeon, author of Solace''I was floored by the power and beauty of this book''Donal Ryan, author of The Queen of Dirt Island''A reading experience of the highest order''Wendy Erskine, author of Dance Move''Extraordinary'' Lisa McInerney, Women''s Prize for Fiction-winning author of The Glorious HeresiesA raw and powerful memoir of addiction and recovery, across three continents and multiple drugs, from early childhood through adulthood.Following an obsessive mind trying (and failing) to find relief, The Black Pool is a gripping thrill-ride through violent, chaotic underworlds. Tracing the roots of an illness through the failures of youth and adolescence and finally back to childhood, it''s about all the wrong places where addicts look for transcendence - from work, to relationships, to writing, to anger.It shows what happens when everything falls apart. It shows us rock bottom and the start of the journey to recovery from there. It''s a memoir shot full of holes and shocking clarities. And towards the end, it achieves something like serenity - something like recovery.''Raw and powerful'' Irish Times, Books to look out for in 2025''A vibrant, darkly humorous writer'' Irish Independent, Non-fiction highlights for 2025''A gripping and personal story of addiction'' Irish Examiner, 2025 Books to Read''Unflinchingly honest, heart-wrenching and life-affirming'' RTÉ, 10 books we''re looking forward to reading in 2025

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Book SynopsisProviding an insight into the mind of one of the leading intellectuals of the modern age, this title chronicles the cultural, moral, and political journeys of this renowned critic and artist at the height of her powers.Trade ReviewRevelatory in the most profound sense * The Times *Gold dust * Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisIn this remarkable autobiography, Thomas De Quincey hauntingly describes the surreal visions and hallucinatory nocturnal wanderings he took through London-and the nightmares, despair, and paranoia to which he became prey-under the influence of the then-legal painkiller laudanum. Forging a link between artistic self-expression and addiction, Confessions seamlessly weaves the effects of drugs and the nature of dreams, memory, and imagination. First published in 1821, it paved the way for later generations of literary drug users, from Baudelaire to Burroughs, and anticipated psychoanalysis with its insights into the subconscious.Trade Review“Mind-blowingly modern . . . [De Quincey’s] poetic depictions of the wild hallucinations that punctuated his years with the drug transfixed his contemporaries. To us, though, his story is revelatory mostly for its eerie familiarity.” —The New York Times Book Review“De Quincey’s rather majestic, classically learned and singular style inspires every page of his writing. . . . The self-controlled equanimity of this classic volume is little short of miraculous.” —The Guardian

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Book SynopsisHer voice is absolutely, beguilingly conversational Intelligent, allusive, iconoclastic, captivatingly intense This is the news from the domestic frontline: personal, unique, unexpurgated, without propaganda, as it unfolded and was experienced Splendid'William Boyd, GuardianWith the intimacy and wit of a Second World War Bridget Jones, Eileen Alexander offers a portal into life during the Blitz.Eileen Alexander fell in love amidst the falling of bombs, finding a quotation from poetry at every turn. Graduating from Cambridge in 1939, she had just been injured in a car crash (the man she had a soft spot for was driving) and had firm ambitions of studying further, making herself useful and absolutely not getting married.Her letters offer a love story and a unique snapshot of the home front, as well as resurrecting the voice of a profoundly funny writer.I wonder what anyone would think if they suddenly came across my letters to you & started reading them in chronological order?' Eileen Trade Review‘Once in a while, just at the right moment, a truly gorgeous real-life love story appears out of the blue, or in this case out of a chance purchase on eBay. Some of wartime’s funniest, most unexpected and possibly unintentionally sexiest letters. Eileen has an insatiable eye for funny stories amid the strange circumstances of war. There are echoes of intimate, Mitfordian shorthand and a touch of the self-deprecating, self-doubting Bridget Jones about her.’The Spectator ‘It has been a long time since I enjoyed a book as much … Of the hundreds of books about World War II that I’ve read, this is one of the best. Imagine how [Austen] might have witnessed the Blitz, and you have a sense of this wonderful book’New York Times ‘Eileen emerges as a force of nature, and her voice is one of the real joys in these remarkable letters. She was clever and caustic, without being cruel; intellectually brilliant and revelling in that fact… a memoir of hope and resilience, as much as of love’ The Times ‘A trove of dazzlingly literary love letters. These are as [Oswyn] Murray rightly concludes, ‘some of the most beautiful and vivid’ love letters of the Second World War’Daily Telegraph ‘The great value of Eileen’s book is that it takes you out of our present troubles into a world even more dangerous and destructive, which people nevertheless survived’ Sunday Times ‘This remarkable treasure trove of letters gives a unique insight into home-front life and romance’Mail on Sunday ‘Superbly entertaining … on almost every page there is a gleaming little starburst of life … She is immensely clever and her literary judgements are delicious. Her writing is a diary-like outpouring, a stream of consciousness in which she relives her days in the glorifying imagined gaze of her recipient; it is a mass of aperçus, jokes, observations and confessions.’ TLS

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Book SynopsisIn 1983 de Beauvoir published Sartre''s letters, maintaining that her own to him had been lost. They were found by de Beauvoir''s adopted daughter, and published to a storm of controversy in France. Tracing the emotional and triangular complications of her life with Sartre, the letters reveal her not only as manipulative and dependent but Simonealso as vulnerable, passionate, jealous and committed.Trade ReviewThere is more than a whiff of Les Liaisons Dangereuses about these pages * Spectator *This is a vivid piece of unexpurgated social history, and an opportunity to hear a vigorous and innovative thinker...speaking in her abrasive, touching, breathtakingly candid private voice * Sunday Times *

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Book Synopsis''I defy you to read this book and come away with a mind unchanged'' John Jeremiah Sullivan''Als has a serious claim to be regarded as the next James Baldwin'' Observer''I see how we are all the same, that none of us are white women or black men; rather, we''re a series of mouths, and that every mouth needs filling: with something wet or dry, like love, or unfamiliar and savory, like love''White Girls is about, among other things, blackness, queerness, movies, Brooklyn, love (and the loss of love), AIDS, fashion, Basquiat, Capote, philosophy, porn, Louise Brooks and Michael Jackson. Freewheeling and dazzling, tender and true, it is one of the most highly acclaimed essay collections in years. ''A voice that''s new, that comes as if from a different room. I defy you to read this book and come away with a mind unchanged'' John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead ''Effortless, honest and fearless'' Rich Benjamin, Trade ReviewA rhapsodic and provocative collection of essays on race, class, sexuality and identity in America * Financial Times *Als has a serious claim to be regarded as the next James Baldwin * Observer *Effortless, fearless and honest * New York Times *The first time you read Hilton Als, it's a revelation ... you wonder where this guy has been all your life ... He is both a startlingly insightful intellectual and a friendly, open and generous-spirited companion. It is the authenticity of his voice which makes him so compelling. That and the sheer dazzling brilliance of his writing, visceral and poetic, big-hearted, hot-headed and fierce' * Big Issue *Enlightening... a book you should read now * VICE *The variations he plays on the themes of identity, intimacy and race achieve a fugue-like complexity and power * Washington Post *Beautiful and deeply intelligent * New Statesman *A stunning analysis of contemporary culture ... undoubtedly one of the most important books of our times * DAZED *Pioneering ... a mosaic of thoughts and observations, taking in the landscape of a New York ravaged by AIDS and his private grief for his lost lover, imagining silent film star Louise Brookes' drawling inner life, and examining his own complicated relationship with his sexuality and blackness * AnOther Magazine *Magnificent * Los Angeles Times *Stunning * Kirkus Reviews *Exhilarating ... Audacious * San Francisco Chronicle *Brilliant * Boston Globe *Mesmerising * Los Angeles Review of Books *This will be debated for years * Entertainment Weekly *This book will change you * Chicago Tribune *I defy you to read this book and come away with a mind unchanged -- John Jeremiah SullivanAn intersectional masterpiece of race and sexuality, fact and fiction, memoir and polemic. The book that allowed a generation to make radicalism full of beauty and emotion * I-D Magazine *

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Book SynopsisEdward St Aubyn's superbly acclaimed Melrose novels are Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother's Milk (shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2006) and At Last. He is also the author of the novels A Clue to the Exit, On the Edge, Lost for Words and Dunbar.

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Book SynopsisIf we’re talking agoraphobia, we’re talking books. I slip between their covers, lose myself in the turn of one page, re-discover myself on the next. Reading is a game of hide-and-seek. Narrative and neurosis, uneasy bedfellows sleeping top to toe.When Graham Caveney was in his early twenties he began to suffer from what was eventually diagnosed as agoraphobia. What followed were decades of managing his condition and learning to live within the narrow limits it imposed on his life: no motorways, no dual carriageways, no shopping centres, limited time outdoors.Graham’s quest to understand his illness brought him back to his first love: books. From Harper Lee’s Boo Radley, Ford Madox Ford, Emily Dickinson, and Shirley Jackson: the literary world is replete with examples of agoraphobics – once you go looking for them.On Agoraphobia is a fascinating, entertaining and sometimes painfully acute look at what it means to go through life with an anxiety disorder that evades easy definition.Trade ReviewNever less than completely absorbing, simply because [Caveney] is such a nimble, exact writer, able to move swiftly but unjarringly between daft jokes and serious reflections. His descriptions of the toll the condition takes on his mental health are horrifying in their precision, but that precision makes them beautiful at the same time...the book has the merit of timeliness, in addition to its eloquence and refreshing sense of being totally unconfected * Telegraph *Intellectually curious, emotionally bracing and immensely erudite. . .bright and funny, and full of telling quotes. . .it will hearten people who have agoraphobia, enlighten medics and teach outsiders all the lessons Caveney has learned -- Blake Morrison * Guardian *A strange and many-headed work that melds personal experience with cultural criticism....thoughtful, humane and unjustly enjoyable * Sunday Times *One of my favourite living writers: intelligent, lucid and, most impressive of all, funny – even when he’s writing about the most difficult subjects. -- Jonathan CoeCaptivating . . . but also a book unscared of open white space, which feels like an act of defiance. For a book about agoraphobia it covers a huge amount of ground. -- Richard BeardGraham Caveney approaches the subject of agoraphobia diaristically, legally, and philosophically; he drinks about it, reads about it, has therapy about it, and assembles the long and fascinating history of its writers. Any of these approaches could have been its own book. But the best part of this book is the silence Caveney somehow also manages to include on the page, which holds space for the phobia’s mute, ineffable, terrifying center. -- Sarah MangusoA witty and engaging cultural history, and a frank and insightful memoir: On Agrophobia is original, smart and hugely entertaining -- David Nicholls

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Book SynopsisThe first volume of the remarkable autobiography of Arthur Koestler, author of Darkness at Noon.In 1931, Arthur Koestler joined the Communist Party, an event he felt to be second only in importance to his birth in shaping his destiny. Before that point, he lived a tumultuous and varied existence. He was a member of the duelling fraternity at the University of Vienna; a collective farm worker in Galilee; a tramp and street vendor in Haifa; the editor of a weekly paper in Cairo; the foreign correspondent of the biggest continental newspaper chain in Paris and the Middle East; a science editor in Berlin; and a member of the North Pole expedition of the Graf Zeppelin. Written with enormous zest, joie de vivre and frankness, Arrow in the Blue is a fascinating self-portrait of a remarkable young man at the heart of the events that shaped the twentieth century. The second volume of Arthur Koestler's autobiography is The Invisible Writing.Trade ReviewA brilliant and deeply moving record of a whole generation as well as of an individual * Observer *The cumulative effect is overwhelming * New Republic *He is a journalist of ideas on a very high level - the kind we lack and need in this country - who functions midway between the realms of art and of society, but whose function is indispensable, if thought is to be part of culture * Saturday Review *Perhaps the most remarkable autobiography since the confessions of Rousseau -- V. S. Pritchett * New Statesman *

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Book SynopsisThe acclaimed biographer and obituarist for The Economist reflects on a career spent pursuing life and capturing it on the page***A FINANCIAL TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES AND TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023***'Lifescapes is the universe in miniature'DAILY TELEGRAPH'She's a genius, I believe' HILARY MANTEL, author of Wolf Hall'What is life?' asked the poet Shelley, and could not come up with an answer. Scientists, too, for all their understanding of how life manifests, thrives and evolves, have still not plumbed that fundamental question. Yet biographers and obituarists continue to corral lives in a few columns, or a few hundred pages, aware all the time how fleeting and elusive their subject is.In this dazzlingly original blend of memoir, biography, observation and poetry, Ann Wroe reflects on the art and impossibility of capturing life on the page. Through her experiences and those of others, through people she has known, studied or merely glimpsed in windows, she movingly explores what makes a life and how that life lingers after.Animated by Wroe's rare imagination, eye for the telling detail, and the wit, beauty and clarity of her writing, Lifescapes is a luminous, deeply personal answer to Shelley's question.Trade ReviewThis thought-provoking and beautifully written book blends memoir with poetry and biography in search of what elements can evoke the character of a person * Financial Times, *Books of the Year* *'I think of my work as catching souls,' writes Ann Wroe, the obituaries editor of The Economist, at the start of this book... How she goes about capturing them all is a fascinating business * Sunday Times, *Books of the Year* *Seamlessly merges scenes from the author’s life with the overflow from her admirably humane Economist obituaries... This glimpse of Wroe at work, enriched with stories from her private notebooks, is a treat akin to, borrowing her words, 'wild plums fallen in the grass' * Times Literary Supplement, *Books of the Year* *Beautifully written, the prose witty, twisting and sensuous, but it is sharp, too * The Times *What a treat it is to read a writer at the top of her game... Astonishing... Lifescapes is the universe in miniature * Daily Telegraph *A brave, unfashionable and out of the ordinary book… A delight… Lifescapes encourages us to take a deep breath, contemplate life more keenly and acknowledge the miraculous if – and when – we find it * Observer *Evocative and beautifully written * Financial Times *This is biography as empathy and even hyper-empathy… Wroe operates like a kind of tuning fork… She seems to feel the energy that thrums in people, nature and objects… Compelling * Times Literary Supplement *Although the book is part memoir, part essay on the art of biography, it is really about the breath of life itself. Wroe’s writing is intense and visionary, at times almost ecstatic. Reader, dive in… Her voice, her writing, already add such consonance, such alert and graceful rapture, to the music of the world * Spectator *She's a genius, I believe, because she lights up every subject she touches -- Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall

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Book Synopsis''Hot damn! Let us rumble, keep going and don''t slow down . . . let''s have a little fun . . .''In his much-anticipated memoir, Hunter S. Thompson looks back on a long and productive life. It is a story of crazed road trips fuelled by bourbon and black acid, of insane judges and giant porcupines, of girls, guns, explosives and, of course, bikes. He also takes on his dissolute youth in Louisville; his adventures in pornography; campaigning for local office in Aspen; and what it''s like to accidentally be accused of trying to kill Jack Nicholson.

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Book SynopsisA third memoir from the author of the huge international bestsellers Angela's Ashes and Tis. In Teacher Man, Frank McCourt details his illustrious, amusing, and sometimes rather bumpy long years as an English teacher in the public high schools of New York CityFrank McCourt arrived in New York as a young, impoverished and idealistic Irish boy but one who crucially had an American passport, having been born in Brooklyn. He didn''t know what he wanted except to stop being hungry and to better himself. On the subway he watched students carrying books. He saw how they read and underlined and wrote things in the margin and he liked the look of this very much. He joined the New York Public Library and every night when he came back from his hotel work he would sit up reading the great novels.Building his confidence and his determination, he talked his way into NYU and gained a literature degree and so began a teaching career that was to last 30 years, working in New York''s public high schoolsTrade Review‘McCourt has a compulsion to tell us the story of his life, but he does it so well – modulating beautifully from ventriloquistically exact repro teen-speak to rhapsodic meditations on his midlife crisis – that one couldn’t possibly want him to stop. I wish I could have been in one of his classes.’ Sunday Times ‘This memoir about teaching is unlike any other I have read: relatively mundane events and incidents shine against that backdrop of that pathetic, abused child.’ Francis Gilbert, Sunday Telegraph ‘In this third memoir, McCourt recounts his years as a high-school teacher in New York, where he would stop at nothing to reach his surly charges. Nine times out of 10, his approach was successful and it is exhilarating to see these generations of tough-talking teenagers blossom.’ Observer

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Book SynopsisMoving and revealing collection of correspondence between Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald - some published for the first time

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Book SynopsisEdward St Aubyn's superbly acclaimed Melrose novels are Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother's Milk (shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2006) and At Last. He is also the author of the novels A Clue to the Exit, On the Edge, Lost for Words and Dunbar.

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Book SynopsisA NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEARFrom one of our greatest living writers, comes a remarkable memoir of a forgotten England.''The war went. We sang in the playground, Bikini lagoon, an atom bomb's boom, and two big explosions. David's father came back from Burma and didn't eat rice. Twiggy taught by reciting The Pied Piper of Hamelin, The Charge of the Light Brigade and the thirteen times table. Twiggy was fat and short and he shouted, and his neck was as wide as his head. He was a bully, though he didn't take any notice of me.'In Where Shall We Run To?, Alan Garner remembers his early childhood in the Cheshire village of Alderley Edge: life at the village school as a sissy and a mardy-arse''; pushing his friend Harold into a clump of nettles to test the truth of dock leaves; his father joining the army to guard the family against Hitler; the coming of the Yanks, with their comics and sweets and chewing gum. From one of our greatest living writers, it is a remarkable and evocative memoir of a vanished England.Trade Review Praise for Where Shall We Run To: ‘In old age childhood memories become vivid again and it’s the present that disappears behind a confusion of vivid fragments. In this book, Garner, now old, has faced that pattern and in place of the bewildering, wonky memory of old age, produced something precise and fresh as flowers. He has become – as we’re told we must – as a little child. He’s also produced one of the best things he’s ever written.’ Frank Cotterell-Boyce, New Statesman ‘Its encounters are vivid and immediate, but it is also an examination of class and change in the England of those years.’ Erica Wagner, Financial Times ‘Every street, every house, every carved stone, mysterious well, dark pond and perilously steep cliff-edge is remembered and described, as Garner roams through it, with a succession of companions…. Garner’s detailed recall of so many characters and events is extraordinary’ Sue Gaisford, The Tablet ‘In this slight but charming memoir about his wartime childhood in Alderley Edge, Garner has pulled off the same trick – making the Cheshire landscape feel fresh, while bringing a new perspective to a tried and tested literary form..and Oh, what language’ Ben Lawrence, Sunday Telegraph ‘This is a book very much about reading and writing, about the marks that we use to give life meaning, whether they are a tramp’s chalk-mark on a wall or the comics and Arthur Mee’s The Children’s Encyclopaedia that allow young Alan to get past block capitals and closer to Real Writing. It is also a book written without a single scrap of hindsight, or rationalisation of the past. This, then, is a writer’s memoir’ Brian Morton, Herald Praise for Alan Garner: ‘ I salute him with the most heartfelt respect and admiration’ Philip Pullman

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Book SynopsisJohn le Carré was a defining writer of his time. This enthralling collection letters - written to readers, publishers, film-makers and actors, politicians and public figures - reveals the playfully intelligent and unfailingly eloquent man behind the penname._____''The symbiosis of author and editor, father and son, has resulted in a brilliant book, le Carré''s final masterpiece'' 5*, Jake Kerridge, Sunday Telegraph_____A Private Spy spans seven decades and chronicles not only le Carré''s own life but the turbulent times to which he was witness. Beginning with his 1940s childhood, it includes accounts of his National Service and his time at Oxford, and his days teaching the ''chinless, pointy-nosed gooseberry-eyed British lords'' at Eton. It describes his entry into MI5 and the rise of the Iron Curtain, and the flowering of his career as a novelist in reaction to the building of the Berlin Wall. Through his letters we travel with him from the Second World War period to the immediate moment in which we live. We find le Carré writing to Sir Alec Guinness to persuade him to take on the role of George Smiley, and later arguing the immorality of the War on Terror with the chief of the German internal security service. What emerges is a portrait not only of the writer, or of the global intellectual, but, in his own words, of the very private, very passionate and very real man behind the name._____Includes letters to:John BanvilleWilliam BurroughsJohn CheeverStephen FryGraham GreeneSir Alec GuinnessHugh LaurieBen MacintyreIan McEwanGary OldmanPhilip RothPhilippe SandsSir Tom StoppardMargaret ThatcherAnd more...Trade ReviewEach letter from John le Carré was a beautifully written miniature essay ... fascinating -- Ben Macintyre * The Times *A Private Spy testifies to le Carré's universally acknowledged gifts as a raconteur, mimic and caricaturist -- Robert Potts * TLS *Unsurprisingly, he was a brilliant correspondent. Revelations tumble out...These engaging letters are edited with great fairness and sensitivity by a family member, his son Tim Cornwell -- Andrew Lycett * Mail on Sunday *The symbiosis of author and editor, father and son, has resulted in a brilliant book, le Carré's final masterpiece, 5* -- Jake Kerridge * Sunday Telegraph *The finest, wisest storyteller -- Richard OsmanA towering writer -- Margaret Atwood[He had a] rare command of language and unique understanding of how the world really works * Daily Telegraph on Silverview *A literary giant -- Stephen King

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Book SynopsisYou will find all of life in this' Deborah Levy After the death of her partner of thirty-two years, Lisa Appignanesi was thrust into a state striated by rage and superstition in which sanity felt elusive. Then, too, the cultural and political moment seemed to collude with her condition: everywhere people were dislocated and angry.In this electrifying and brave examination of an ordinary enough death and its aftermath, Everyday Madness uses all Lisa Appignanesi's evocative and analytic powers to scrutinize her own and our society's experience of grieving. With searing honesty, lashed by humour, she navigates us onto the terrain of childhood, the way it forms our feelings of love and hate, and steers us towards a less tumultuous version of the everyday.Trade Review‘Appignanesi luminously conveys the wayward emotions that make bereavement a language that is hard to understand, yet speaks to us every day when we experience a great loss. You will find all of life in this rewarding, scholarly and entertaining conversation about freedom, Freud, fury, enduring love, and how mythic and modern families haunt each other’ Deborah Levy ‘Keen-eyed, unflinching in her honesty, Lisa Appignanesi carries us down into the depths through an inner landscape of unappeasable turmoil, as she moves towards knowledge of love and the serenity it brings. With piercing insight and many moments of intense poignancy, she illuminates the complexity and costs of a remarkable and passionate journey’ Marina Warner ‘Wonderful, moving, extraordinary. It is sui generis. I feel enormously privileged to have read it – twice. Its structure is remarkable – an enacting of the last two years. Bravo bravo’ Edmund de Waal ‘A ragged, stop-start quality, often feeling like a conversation, at times an argument, with the reader, and is all the more engaging for it…’ Guardian ‘An investigation of a state that floats somewhere between diagnosed mental illness and daily life; she is her survey’s principal case, but she’s interested, too, in the “historical moment” whose anger and loss, she insists, can “be understood as sharing a set of emotions” with her own’ Observer ‘It is anger of the everyday sort that is currently being politicised. Feminists are fighting back against the way women’s anger is typically caricatured and delegitimised, and celebrating the power of collective female anger as a way of flexing socially progressive muscle … a brave and compelling book’ New Statesman ‘Everyday Madness is supple, powerful and remarkably solipsistic; Appignanesi meditates with great wisdom and fierce honesty on "the puzzle that the self perennially is" in a memoir that begins in opaqueness and ends in clarity' TLS

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Book SynopsisMonica discovered the pleasure of daily banter with the milkman and grocer's boy and the joy of doing an honest day's work, all the while keeping a wry eye on the childish pique of her employers.Trade ReviewGlorious entertainment * Daily Mail *Riotously amusing * The Times *

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Book SynopsisBorn in Jerusalem in 1939, Amos Oz was the internationally acclaimed author of many novels and essay collections, translated into over forty languages, including his brilliant semi-autobiographical work, A Tale of Love and Darkness. His last novel, Judas, was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2017 and won the Yasnaya Polyana Foreign Fiction Award. He received several international awards, including the Prix Femina, the Israel Prize, the Goethe Prize, the Frankfurt Peace Prize and the 2013 Franz Kafka Prize. He died in December 2018.Trade ReviewOne of the funniest, most tragic and most touching books I have ever read. A testament to a family, a time and a place. * Guardian *A masterpiece * Irish Times *One of the most gripping, intense and moving autobiographies I have ever read. * Independent on Sunday *It sweeps across 120 years of family history, weaving a tragi-comic saga of love and books, of Jewish life and immigrant life the world over, and of the universal madness of families. Read it now - I promise you won't read a more brilliant book in a long, long while. * Daily Mail *Oz's account of his childhood is often very funny - and then profoundly moving, as he circles slowly round to confront the intolerable pain at the heart of it -- Michael Frayn * Week *

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Book SynopsisINTRODUCED BY LISSA EVANS''I envy anyone yet to discover the joy of Monica Dickens. She''s beady eyed, big hearted and blissfully funny'' NINA STIBBE '' Humorous, moving and fascinating'' CLARE MACKINTOSH Considering herself unsuitable for any other contribution to the war effort, Monica Dickens opts for nursing, imagining herself gliding through the wards, serene in a pure white halo cap. On enrolment, however, she is promptly stripped of all illusions. Intelligent and headstrong, Monica struggles to submit to the iron rule of the Matron and toils over the mountains of menial work that are a trainee''s lot. But there are friends among the staff and patients, night-time escapades to dances with dashing army men and her secret writing project to keep her going.One Pair of Feet is a witty and brilliantly observed autobiographical novel, based upon Monica Dickens''s own trials and tribulations as a wartime nurse.''Monica''Trade ReviewHumorous, moving and fascinating -- Clare MackintoshI envy anyone yet to discover the joy of Monica Dickens. She's beady eyed, big hearted and blissfully funny -- Nina StibbeOne of the most affectionate and humorous observers of the English scene -- John BetjemanMonica's naked curiosity and general bolshiness are easy to identify with, and as a narrator she always tells us what we're longing to know - it's like listening to a friend's anecdote, and egging them on -- Lissa EvansOne Pair of Feet is not just a spirited and entertaining account of a hospital nurse in wartime, but a fascinating glimpse into a time and a culture so recent and yet so utterly changed -- Marina LewyckaA brilliantly funny account -- Elizabeth Bowen

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Book SynopsisA memoir about motherhood and music from the bestselling author of I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS''A brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal woman'' BARACK OBAMAMaya Angelou''s seven volumes of autobiography are a testament to the talents and resilience of this extraordinary writer. Loving the world, she also knows its cruelty. As a black woman she has known discrimination and extreme poverty, but also hope, joy, achievement and celebration. In her third marvellous volume, music and her son are the focus of Maya Angelou''s life. She is on the edge of a new world: marriage, show business and a triumphant tour of Porgy and Bess.''She moved through the world with unshakeable calm, confidence and a fierce grace . . . She will always be the rainbow in my clouds'' OPRAH WINFREY''She was important in so many ways. She launched African American women writing in the United States. She was generous to a fault. She had nineteen talents - used ten. And was a real original. There is no duplicate'' TONI MORRISON

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Book SynopsisInternational bestseller Leïla Slimani''s elegant meditation on life and death, art and beauty, translated by Sam Taylor ''A revelation - I have never felt more seen by a book, nor have I been so gripped'' KATY HESSEL''An engaging meditation'' DAILY TELEGRAPHIn 2019, Leïla Slimani was commissioned by her editor to spend a sleepless night alone in a museum and to document the experience. Here, we find her grappling with the thoughts and ideas that emerge from her solitude as she walks the halls of the Punta della Dogana in Venice, interrogating her life as a woman, a writer and a daughter. In a space where old meets new, she beholds her past and present; surrounded by art, she explores what it means to behold and clasp beauty; enveloped by night, she confronts the meaning of life and death.

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Book SynopsisIncluded in the BEST OF GRANTA series: the Costa-award winning memoir on what it means to grow old.

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Book Synopsis"Original, important, moving, witty and exquisitely-written. WHAT a feat." - BERNARDINE EVARISTO"Incredible... beautiful and funny and humane." - EMILIE PINE"Pristine poetry and prose." KATHERINE MAY, AUTHOR OF WINTERING"Babies who are this small, he says, have a good chance of survival. Small is not good for babies. It is not whimsical or cute or the cause of admiration. It is the first time it occurs to us that they might not survive. Babies die from smallness."Claire Lynch knew that having children with her wife would be complicated but she could never have anticipated the extent to which her life would be redrawn by the process.This dazzling debut begins with the smallest of life's substances, the microscopic cells subdividing in a petri dish in a fertility treatment centre. She moves through her story in incremental yet ever growing steps, from the fingernail-sized pregnancy test result screen which bears two affirmative lines to the premature arrival of her children who have to wear scale-model oxygen masks in their life-saving incubators. Devastatingly poignant and profoundly observant - and funny against the odds - Claire considers whether it is our smallness that makes our lives so big.

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Book SynopsisElizabeth Jane Howard was the author of fifteen highly acclaimed novels, including the five volumes of The Cazalet Chronicles, as well as After Julius, Falling, Getting It Right, Love All, and Odd Girl Out. The Cazalet Chronicles The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion, Casting Off and All Change have become established as modern classics and have been adapted for a major BBC television series and for BBC Radio 4. She had one child, Nicola, and married three times lastly to fellow author Sir Kingsley Amis. In 2000 she was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List, and in 2002 Macmillan published her autobiography, Slipstream. She died, aged ninety, at home in Suffolk on 2 January 2014.Trade ReviewHer talent seemed so effervescent, so unstoppable, that there was no predicting where it might take her -- Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall

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