Essays Books

Book SynopsisUrsula K. Le Guin has won or been nominated for over 200 awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy and SFWA Grand Master Awards. She is the acclaimed author of the Earthsea sequence and The Left Hand of Darkness - which alone would qualify her for literary immortality - as well as a remarkable body of short fiction, including the powerful, Hugo-winning ''The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas'' and the masterpiece of anthropological and environmental SF ''The Word for World is Forest'' - winner of the Hugo Award for best novella. But Ursula Le Guin''s talents do not stop at fiction. Over the course of her extraordinary career, she has penned numerous essays around themes important to her: anthropology, environmentalism, feminism, social justice and literary criticism to name a few. She has responded in detail to criticism of her own work and even reassessed that work in the context of such critiques. This selection of the best of Le Guin''s non-ficTrade ReviewEven in death, it seems, Le Guin is one of the singular speculative voices of our future, thanks to her knack for anticipating issues of seminal importance to society. * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *By turns sharp, funny and insightful, high-minded but never mean-spirited, the book embodies its author's lifelong quest for freedom: freedom as a woman, freedom to write what she pleased, freedom to like what she liked. Genre fiction - and literature in general - has lost not just one of its brightest exponents but one of its bolshiest champions. -- James Lovegrove * FINANCIAL TIMES *It's a perfect way to remember Le Guin: like her, it's forthright, nuanced and above all - wise. -- Nic Clarke * SFX *An excellent collection of non-fiction writing by the recently deceased Ursula Le Guin * CHOICE *Characteristically straight-talking and unpretentious, Le Guin first introduces the book as a "carrier bag full of ideas and responses, thoughts and rethinkings". Then moving swiftly from the ordinary to the magical in under half a page she ends by hoping "that readers wandering in this garden of forking paths will find themselves in a rose plot or a bed of mandrake-root or a small grove of mallorns or sequoias where they feel at home" -- Ruth Scurr * THE GUARDIAN *Unsurprisingly, given her groundbreaking fiction, this collection exposes Le Guin's contantly whip-smart intellect, her wide-ranging interests and a treatment of her varied subject matter that is at different times both deeply profound and enjoyably playful...Whether she's writing about Star Wars or Borges, about the nature of beauty or heroes or princesses or utopias, the picture painted is of an endlessly engaged and inquisitive mind, and a restless intelligence that it is a joy to spend time with. -- Doug Johnstone * THE BIG ISSUE *Lit up throughout by vibrant and vital prose, it's a cumulative tour de force that deserves , and rewards, careful study...To fully appreciate the brilliance of her canon of work means paying equal attention to her talents as a perceptive social commentator and political observer, with a catalogue of committed non-fiction to her credit. It's a reputation that the publication of this welcome collection should do much to confirm. -- Rich Cross * STARBURST *

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn enchanting celebration of life''s small pleasures, this little book captures the French imagination and art of living a good life. Each chapter features a small pleasure that is both uniquely Gallic and universal. From the smell of apples maturing in a cellar to the gentle whir of a bicycle dynamo at dusk to turning the pages of a newspaper over breakfast, to the joy of a snowstorm inside a paperweight . . . Recounted with a lively, innocent curiosity about the little things that make life worthwhile, this is an unforgettable, absorbing read to be savoured at length by everyone looking to create more peace and joy in their lives.

Read more less

Book Synopsis‘One of the world’s most prominent postcolonial writers … He has consistently and with great compassion penetrated the effects of colonialism and its effects on the lives of uprooted and migrating individuals’ Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee Delivered in London on 7 December 2021, 'Writing' is the lecture of the Nobel Laureate in Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah. Collected here with three further essays, it explores his coming-of-age, his early experiences in 1960s Britain, the narratives of oceans, his lifelong love affair with reading, and the power of writing to subvert the stories that have been handed to us. Generous, funny and wise, this collection is the perfect introduction to the storyteller described as ‘one of Africa’s most important living writers’; whose work, now spanning four decades, continues to spin wonder and magic while offering penetrating insight into exile, migration and homecoming. 'In book after book, he guides us through seismic historic moments and devastating societal ruptures while gently outlining what it is that keeps those families, friendships and loving spaces intact' Maaza Mengiste 'A wondrous writer' Philippe SandsTrade ReviewPraise for Abdulrazak Gurnah: 'Rarely in a lifetime can you open a book and find that reading it encapsulates the enchanting qualities of a love affair * THE TIMES *Gurnah gathers close all those who were meant to be forgotten, and refuses their erasure -- MAAZE MENGISTE * GUARDIAN *A master storyteller * FINANCIAL TIMES *A powerfully evocative oeuvre that keeps coming back to the same questions, in spare, graceful prose, about the ties that bind and the ties that fray * DAILY TELEGRAPH *A real writer, someone with something to say about the world * OBSERVER *A captivating storyteller, with a voice both lyrical and mordant, and an oeuvre haunted by memory and loss. His intricate novels of arrival and departure . reveal, with flashes of acerbic humour, the lingering ties that bind continents, and how competing versions of history collide * GUARDIAN *One of Africa's greatest living writers -- GILES FODEN

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn his timely new book, Mikhail Shishkin, argues that Russia is not a 'riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma': we just don't know enough about it. So what is the real story behind Putin's autocratic regime and its invasion of Ukraine?In My Russia: War or Peace? Shishkin traces the roots of Russia's problems, from the 'Kievan Rus' via the Grand Duchy of Moscow, empire, revolution and Cold War, to the now thirty-year-old Russian Federation. He explores the uneasy relationship between state and citizens, explains Russian attitudes to people's rights and democracy, and proposes that there are really two Russian peoples: the disillusioned and disaffected, who suffer from 'slave mentality', and those who embrace 'European' values and try to stand up to oppression.Both deeply personal and taking a broader historical view, My Russia is a passionate, eye-opening account of a state entangled in a complex and bloody past, as well as a love letter to a conflicted country. Will Russia continue its vicious circle of upheaval and autocracy, or will its people find a way out of history - and how can we help?Trade ReviewShishkin is the most prominent Russian novelist of his generation. To compare him to Solzhenitsyn is no exaggeration... [An] important book * Sunday Times *An elegant blend of history, biography and polemic * Daily Telegraph * Often sings with powerfully estranged, original observations... minutiae and grand philosophy collide on every page. * Boris Fishman, The New York Times Book Review (on The Light and The Dark) *Shishkin is interested in what is most precious and singular in classic Russian fiction: the passionate inquiry into what, in Maidenhair, is called the 'soul, quintessence, pollen.' * Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal (on The Light and The Dark) *

Read more less

Book Synopsis"Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here," Plato warned would-be philosophers. Mathematician Karl Sigmund agrees.In The Waltz of Reason, he shows how mathematics and philosophy together have shaped our understanding of space, chance, logic, cooperation, voting, and the social contract. Sigmund shows how game theory is integral to moral philosophy, how statistics shaped the meaning of reason, and how the search for a logical basis for math leads to deep questions about the nature of truth itself. But this is no dry tome: Sigmund's wit and humour shine as brightly as his erudition.The Waltz of Reason is an engrossing history of ideas as vibrant as a ballroom full of dancers, one that empowers as it entertains, following the complex and occasionally dizzying steps of the thinkers who have moulded our thought and founded our world.

Read more less

Book SynopsisNAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK BY DEBUTIFUL, LIT HUB, PASTE MAGAZINE, BOOK RIOT, INSIDE HOOK, AND NYLONThis book is a rare comfort, a companion . . . Makes you say: yes, that is exactly how it is.-Torrey PetersA ferocious inquiry into art and desire, style and politics, madness and salvation, and coming of age in our volatile, image-obsessed present.You know them when you see them: mean boys take up space, wielding cruelty to claim their place in the pecking order. Some mean boys make art or music or fashion; others make memes. Mean boys stomp the runways in Milan and Paris; mean boys marched at Charlottesville. And in the eyes of critic and style expert Geoffrey Mak, mean boys are the emblem of our society: an era ravenous for novelty, always thirsting for the next edgy thing, even at our peril. In this pyrotechnic memoir-in-essays, Mak ranges widely over our landscape of paranoia,

Read more less

Book SynopsisAppreciate your True Friends with Friendship Quotes and Stories“BJ Gallagher ... motivates and teaches with empathy, understanding, and more than a little humor.”—Debba Haupert, of the Girlfriendology PodcastTrue friends are hard to find and even harder to describe. But with real life stories, friendship quotes, inspirational quotes, and anecdotes about the ups and downs and ins and outs of friendships, Friends are Everything has everything you ever need for friendship empowerment.Beautiful friendships of all shapes and sizes. To bestselling author B.J. Gallagher, there are so many types of friends. There are friends who tell you what you don’t want to hear, friends who help you be your best self, friends who forgive you when you hurt them, friends who respect your boundaries. There are neighbors, best friends, childhood friends, spiritual friends, friends who are family, friends who are lovers, friends at work, and the list goes on. Get ready to dive into what it really means to love a friend and what it means to be one.Inspirational quotes for your girlfriends. With more than three dozen inspiring stories from girlfriends across the country, affirmative acronyms, and female empowerment quotes, Friends are Everything is a heartfelt celebration of friendships across all generations and a perfect gift to share with your bestie.Inside Friends are Everything, find friendship quotes, inspirational quotes, and words of empowerment in heartwarming and entertaining stories such as: “Please, Help Me Stop Shooting Myself in the Foot!” “Finding Mr. Probably Right” “A Woman’s Wheels” If you enjoyed books like That's What She Said; Tell Me More; or Hey Friend, I Wrote a Book About You, then you’ll love Friends are Everything.Trade Review“BJ Gallagher…motivates and teaches with empathy, understanding, and more than a little humor.”—Debba Haupert, of the Girlfriendology Podcast “Reading Friends Are Everything reminds me of all the ways my friends have literally saved my life…. This lovely book is a joyous testament to friendship. It’s a treasure chest full of gems and jewels—each one reflecting a different facet of fabulous friendships.”—Diane Conway, author of What Would You Do If You Had No Fear? “Be prepared to feel touched, motivated, and filled with warmth—and to view your treasured friends with new eyes.”—Susan Page, author of If I’m So Wonderful, Why Am I Still Single?Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction True Friends: 1 Understand that the little things can make a BIG difference 2 Laugh together . . . often! 3 Help us see ourselves more clearly 4 Love us unconditionally, just as we are 5 Teach and inspire us to be our best selves 6 Extend themselves with generosity and love 7 Comfort and support us through struggles and disappointments 8 Forgive us when we hurt them, just as we forgive them 9 Let us love them back 10 Know the power of community. . . . Together we can do almost anything! And Finally . . . Thank You! v

Read more less

Book SynopsisA master of the novel, short story and memoir, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Everybody's Foolnow gives us his very first collection of personal essays, thoughts on writing, reading and living.In these nine essays, Richard Russo provides insight into his life as a writer, teacher, friend and reader. From a commencement speech to the story of how an oddly placed toilet made him reevaluate the purpose of humour in art and life, to a comprehensive analysis of Mark Twain's value, to his harrowing journey accompanying a dear friend as she pursued gender-reassignment surgery, The Destiny Thief reflects the broad interests and experiences of one of America's most beloved authors. Warm, funny, wise and poignant, the essays included here traverse Russo's writing life, expanding our understanding of who he is and how his singular, incredibly generous mind works. An utter joy to read, they give deep insight into the creative process from the perspective of one of our greatest writers.Trade ReviewIt turns out that Russo the nonfiction writer is a lot like Russo the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. He is affably disagreeable, wry, idiosyncratic, vulnerably bighearted, a craftsman of lubricated sentences...Perhaps what's most admirable about these essays is their genial and searching tone. In this know-it-all age Russo places his faith in the ideals of art-ambiguity, paradox, heresy, the sublime-over the black-and-white ideologies or our current politics. * New York Times Book Review *Entertaining slices of writerly wisdom * Guardian *Russo's colourful book offers his novels' fans more of his dazzling and moving writing, often revealing glimpses of the forces that drive a bestselling fiction writer. * Publishers Weekly *Splendid. . . . These are wise, personal pieces, and readers get to know the author as a comforting, funny, and welcoming guy. * Kirkus *For aspiring writers, Russo's musings on the art and craft of the novel are a trove of knowledge and guidance. For adoring readers, they are a window into the imagination and inspiration for Russo's beloved novels, screenplays, and short stories. . . . Few authors seem as approachable in print and, one suspects, in person as acclaimed novelist Russo. * Booklist *Certain to please anyone familiar with his short fiction and novels. . . . The unselfconscious voice threading through these nine explorations of writing, writers, and everyday life is a welcome alternative to the all-too-common introspection and fraught 'literariness' found in many recent memoir and essay collections from prominent authors. Readers seeking a deeply insightful record of the creative process and the life guiding it will find resonance here. * Library Journal (starred) *Richard Russo is one of America's finest chronicles of blue-collar existence. -- Donal O'Donoghue * RTE Guide *

Read more less

Book Synopsis'Go to your "books to read" list and place Elisabeth's Lists right at the top' Damian Barr The vivacious and moving true story of a lost era and a lost grandmother, pieced together from an inherited book of handwritten lists Many years after the death of her grandmother, Lulah Ellender inherited a curious object - a book of handwritten lists. On the face of it, Elisabeth's lists seemed rather ordinary - shopping lists, items to be packed for a foreign trip, a tally of the eggs laid by her hens. But from these everyday fragments, Lulah began to weave together the extraordinary life of the grandmother she never knew - a life lived in the most rarefied and glamorous of circles, from Elisabeth's early years as an ambassador's daughter in 1930s China, to her marriage to a British diplomat and postings in Madrid under Franco's regime, post-war Beirut, Rio de Janeiro and Paris. But it was also a life of stark contrasts - between the opulent excess of embassy banquets and the deprivations of wartime rationing in England, between the unfailing charm she displayed in public and the dark depressions that blanketed her in private, between her great appetite for life and her sudden, early death. As Lulah learns that she is losing her own mother, she finds herself turning to her grandmother's life, and to her much-travelled book of lists, in search of meaning and solace. Elisabeth's Lists is both a vivid memoir and a moving study of the familial threads that binds us, even beyond death. 'This is a hauntingly beautiful meditation on life and death' GuardianTrade Review[A] tender memoir... A moving, evocative read. Five stars -- Eithne Farry * Sunday Express *Go to your "books to read" list and place Elisabeth's Lists right at the top. It is charming without ever being whimsical and a vital voice as Elisabeth asserts her right to be more than simply a diplomat's daughter or ambassador's wife. A valuable record from a woman we are only now getting to know -- Damian BarrThis is a hauntingly beautiful meditation on life and death -- PD Smith * Guardian *With great compassion and imagination, Elisabeth's grand-daughter Lulah tenderly brings to life the grandmother she never knew -- Elisa Segrave, author of * The Girl from Station X: My Mother's Unknown Life *A lovely read * BBC Radio Scotland *Varied, revealing, sad and funny. It wears its research lightly but still manages to inform and delight. I expect [...] readers will thoroughly enjoy it -- Gill Davies * Shiny New Books blog *Vivid and atmospheric -- Martin Gayford * Chap *Extraordinary... A love letter to the grandmother the writer never knew * People *A perceptive and original first book, it is as much a meditation on the meaning of lists as it is a biography -- Bee Wilson * LRB *An intelligent and moving family narrative -- Selected by Honor Clerk as a book of the year * Spectator *

Read more less

Book Synopsis__________________THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERStop searching for the answers - and start delighting in the questions with Pandora Sykes, co-host of The High Low podcast.'Deliciously fascinating' MARIAN KEYES'Refreshing ... thoughtful, considered' STYLIST'Brilliant' EVENING STANDARD'Timely and fulsome' CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS'Joyful and wise' LISA TADDEOModern life is full of choices - but how do we know we're making the right ones? Why, in our attempts to make life easier, do we often make it harder?With a light touch and plenty of humour, Pandora Sykes delves into the myths we've been sold and the stories we tell ourselves, in a timely bid to encourage us to consider the lives we once led, and how they might better serve us. It's time to stop looking for the answers - and start delighting in the questions. __________________'Thoughtful and funny' DOLLY ALDERTON'Like a very clever, lucid, charming friend unpacking all the messy anxieties of modern existence with tremendous intelligence and elan. Read this book. It will help your life' INDIA KNIGHT'Had me cackling. So smart but so well-researched' CANDICE BRATHWAITE'Energetic and compelling' OLIVIA SUDJIC'Navigates complicated issues with great humanity, humour and humility ... [it] left me wanting more' SATHNAM SANGHERA'Self-aware, self-deprecating, relatable, funny, and brilliantly curious' STACEY DOOLEY'Witty and zeitgeisty ... strikes a fresh, honest note' VANITY FAIR__________________Readers love Pandora's first book:'A truly marvellous debut''Insightful and beautifully written''Totally brilliant ... I devoured this masterpiece in one sitting''A bright book in a gloomy year''Feeling a lot better about life after finishing this!''I adored Pandora's book and will be thinking about it for a long time.''So clever and thought-provoking''Pandora is a wonderful writer and I found myself unexpectedly in tears by the end'INCLUDES A NEW PROLOGUETrade ReviewA timely collection of essays from journalist and podcast host Pandora Sykes that touch on everything from happiness to wellness; womanhood to consumerism and the anxieties and agendas that consume our lives ... Sharp and observant writing ... A manifesto for the millennial woman. * Evening Standard *A collection of essays that feel like I'm in a deep and open conversation with the person who peered inside my head and saw exactly what I've been thinking about all these years. Thorough, timely and fulsome. -- Candice Carty-WilliamsSykes's essays, written pre-pandemic, could have read like a relic from a pampered bygone age with nothing bigger to worry about. Yet, instead, it feels like a cleareyed warning of the world to which we may now be returning. -- Gaby Hinsliff * Guardian *Tackles subjects that some might dismiss as trivial (texting, social media, why women increasingly want to dress like one another) with striking intellectual rigour ... refreshing for the depth and breadth of its research. Rather than making generalisations about womanhood based on anecdotes from her own life, Sykes draws on statistics, philosophy, pop culture and more to make thoughtful, considered observations. * Stylist *I absolutely loved How Do We Know We're Doing It Right?. It’s like a very clever, lucid, charming friend unpacking all the messy anxieties of modern existence with tremendous intelligence and elan. Women will recognise parts of the themselves on every page, regardless of their age, whether Sykes is writing about authenticity, social media or the need to always seem busy. I found it deeply interesting and often enlightening: I kept putting it down to think about something the author had said. Read this book. It will help your life. -- India Knight

Read more less

Book SynopsisA New York Times Bestseller 'Within two pages, nature writing feels different and fresh and new ... This book demands we find the eyes to see and the heart to love such things once more. It is a very fine book indeed, truly full of wonder' - James Rebanks, author of Pastoral Song 'Unusual and captivating ... a thing of wonder, the book that most took me by surprise this year' - Jini Reddy, author of Wanderland Aimee Nezhukumatathil has had many homes, but wherever she was - however awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape - she found guidance and perspective in nature. The axolotl smiles, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shakes off unwanted advances; the narwhal survives its hostile environment. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. Warm, lyrical and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Mini Nakamura, this book ranges through joy and pain, encountering love, motherhood and heritage, racism and the destruction humans can wreak. In all those things, it shows that if you listen carefully, if you open your eyes wide, the world is full of wonders.Trade ReviewWithin two pages, nature writing feels different and fresh and new. Nezhukumatathil has written a timely story about love, identity and belonging ... We are losing the language and the ability to see and understand the wondrous things around us. And our lives are impoverished by this process ... This book demands we find the eyes to see and the heart to love such things once more. It is a very fine book indeed, truly full of wonder. -- James Rebanks * New York Times Book Review *An unusual and captivating memoir ... Nezhukumatathil exudes a rare zest for life, and her inherent love for the natural world shines through. World of Wonders is a thing of wonder, the book that most took me by surprise this year -- Jini Reddy, Wainwright Prize-shortlisted author of WanderlandA restless search for identity and belonging finds a warm welcome in nature's details. Nezhukumatathil's writing is like coming home. -- Gillian Burke, biologist and presenter of BBC2's Springwatch and WinterwatchAimee Nezhukumatathil's World of Wonders is the first book to make me feel like a firefly as much as it reminds me I'm still a black boy playing in Central Mississippi woods. The book walks. It sprints. It leaps. Most importantly, the book lingers in a world where power, people, and the literal outside wrestle painfully, beautifully. This book is a world of wonders. This book is about to shake the Earth. -- Kiese LaymonAimee Nezhukumatathil gives us the world in technicolour. Astonishing nature burgeons all around her as she shows what it means to find wonder in a wilfully dull world -- Katherine MaySometimes we need teachers who remind us how to be flabbergasted and gobsmacked and flummoxed and enswooned by the wonders of this earth. How to be in stupefied and devotional love to the wonders of this earth. How to be in love with this, our beloved earth. Aimee Nezhukumatathil's World of Wonders is as good and generous a teacher as one could ever ask for. This book enraptures with its own astonishments and reveries while showing us how to be enraptured, how to revere. Which, again, is showing us how to be in love. I can think of nothing more important. Or wonderful. -- Ross Gay, author of The Book of DelightsFrom its gorgeous illustrations to its unusual combination of lyrical nature writing and memoir, World of Wonders is hands-down one of the most beautiful books of the year. -- NPR "Best Books of 2020"In thirty bewitching essays, Nezhukumatathil spotlights natural astonishments raining from monsoon season in India to clusters of fireflies in western New York, each one a microcosm of joy and amazement. With her ecstatic prose and her rapturous powers of insight, Nezhukumatathil proves herself a worthy spiritual successor to the likes of Mary Oliver and Annie Dillard, setting the bar high for a new generation of nature writers. * Esquire *Should the wonderful David Attenborough ever retire, my hope is someone at BBC has read the work of Aimee Nezhukumatathil ... What a lovely book this is, gentle in its pacing, well-illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, and quietly subversive in the way she channels its gusts of joy. * Literary Hub *Nezhukumatathil's investigations, enhanced by Nakamura's vividly rendered full-color illustrations, range across the world, from a rapturous rendering of monsoon season in her father's native India to her formative years in Iowa, Kansas, and Arizona, where she learned from the native flora and fauna that it was common to be different ... The writing dazzles with the marvel of being fully alive. -- Starred Review * Kirkus Reviews *An unusual and beguiling blend of cultural memoir and Nature writing ... [Nezhukumatathil's] irrepressible spirit and zest for life shine throughout * Resurgence & Ecologist Magazine *These are the praise songs of a poet working brilliantly in prose. Each essay compresses a great deal of art and truth into a small space, whether about fireflies or flamingos, monkeys or monsoons, childhood or motherhood, or the trials and triumphs of living with brown skin in a dominant white world. You will not find a more elegant, exuberant braiding of natural and personal history. -- Scott Russell Sanders, author of The Way of ImaginationThe nature writing we have been exposed to has been overwhelmingly male and white, which is just one reason that Aimee Nezhukumatathil's latest essay collection, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments is a breath of fresh air ... What makes her work shine is its joyful embrace of difference, revealing that true beauty resides only in diversity. * San Francisco Chronicle *World of Wonders is a stunning union of biography, poetry, philosophy, and science; it is imbued with a love for her readers and for the natural world, and with a hope that people of color will feel more seen in nature writing . . . With a sense of amazement for the creatures around us, Aimee makes an ardent and artistic case for a compassionate ethics grounded in a deeper understanding?and love?of nature. * The Rumpus *Reading World of Wonders, it's clear that Nezhukumatathil is a poet. These essays sing with joy and longing?each focusing on a different natural wonder, all connected by the thread of Nezhukumatathil's curiosity and her identification with the world's beautiful oddities ... It's a heartwarming, poignant, and often funny collection, enlivened by Fumi Nakamura's dreamy illustrations. * BuzzFeed *Aimee Nezhukumatathil's World of Wonders is a gorgeous collection of essays that ruminate on flora, fauna, and what they can teach us about life itself. Moving between vignettes from Nezhukumatathil's life and her ponderings on nature, World of Wonders is a one-of-a-kind book you won't want to miss this year. * Bustle *Nezhukumatathil applies her skill as a poet to a scintillating series of short essays on nature. She takes up topics that fascinate her - the bizarre-looking potoo birds of Central and South America; corpse flowers, with their rich colors and acrid odor - and connects them to her own experience of the world ... Throughout, she vividly describes sounds, smells, and color - the myriad hues of a 'sea of saris' from India - and folds in touches of poetry. Fumi Nakamura's lush illustrations add to the book's appeal. Readers of Terry Tempest Williams and Annie Dillard will appreciate Nezhukumatathil's lyrical look at nature. * Publishers Weekly *

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis volume is an in-depth and exquisitely illustrated guide to the Second Age of Middle-earth, one of the least-explored periods of Arda's history.The Illustrated World of Tolkien: The Second Age, is the follow up companion to the best-selling The Illustrated World of Tolkien, and gathers together artwork, charts, and fascinating and scholarly writing from renowned Tolkien expert David Day. Exploring the languages, poetry and elements of the heroic ages of Norse, Greek and Roman mythologies that may have influenced Tolkien's writing, it is a reference guide for any fan of Tolkien's work, Tolkien's world and the imaginative brilliance his vision inspired.The Second Age is made up of two great narrative channels: on the one hand the rise and cataclysmic downfall of the island-kingdom of Númenor and its aftermath, and on the other the forging of the Rings of Power and the rise to power of the new dark lord.Tolkien's sources for his Second Age are, of course, as rich and varied as ever and this book delves into some of these influences and shows how the power of Tolkien's imagination is manifest even in the lesser-known parts of his legendarium.This work is unofficial and is not authorised by the Tolkien Estate or HarperCollins Publishers.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIt’s early morning and there’s a whole new day ahead. How will it unfold? The baby will feed, hopefully she’ll sleep; Helen looks out of the window. The Long Form is the story of two people composing a day together. It is a day of movements and improvisations, common and uncommon rhythms, stopping and starting again. As the morning progresses, a book – The History of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding – gets delivered, and the scope of the day widens further. Matters of care-work share ground with matters of friendship, housing, translation, aesthetics and creativity. Small incidents of the day revive some of the oldest preoccupations of the novel: the force of social circumstance, the power of names, the meaning of duration and the work of love. With lightness and precision, Kate Briggs renews Henry Fielding’s proposition for what a novel can be, combining fiction and essay to write an extraordinary domestic novel of far-reaching ideas. Trade Review‘An exquisite study of care and attention, The Long Form explores the mysterious, often unbridgeable gulf between daily life and narrative fiction like nothing else.... Written in crystalline prose as tender as it is precise, as clean as it is challenging, this is the most thorough investigation of what the novel, as form, can really do; it asks who or what it is for, how it may or may not interact with our various realities, how it holds time and space and might better equip us to make sense of the world beyond the page. Kate Briggs has created a quietly radical masterpiece.’ — Maddie Mortimer, Goldsmiths Prize judge‘'[S]ometimes she seems to achieve the impossible, weaving an invisible emotive thread between polemic and experience to powerful effect.... [M]akes for exhilarating reading. There is a sense of new ground being broken.' — Jo Hamya, The Guardian‘The Long Form is gripping, with all the satisfactions of more traditional narratives, albeit in unprecedented places…Reading Briggs, I felt the novel, as a genre, lift its head and look around the room, with all the effort, focus, and luminous curiosity of a newborn, seeing in a way it hadn’t seen before.’ — Audrey Wollen, New Yorker‘The Long Form is… an exhilarating experiment in form, an examination of the function of time in the novel, which includes an irresistible graphic element that punctuates the narrative and helps to conjure the stagelike setting occupied by the maternal dyad. Briggs invokes E. M. Forster—“Every novel needs a clock”—and indeed her novel’s timepiece has us on the edge of our seat, turning the pages in anticipation. I finished The Long Form and started again from the beginning; I wanted to understand how this miracle of a book had come to be; I was not ready to let go.’ — Moyra Davey, The Paris Review‘I got the feeling ... not of interrupting my life by reading it but understanding what it means to interrupt a book with a life. And in this sense the book comes to life in a way none other has for me – not a thing to be consumed but a force exerting its own energy on me.’ — Elisa Wouk Almino, Los Angeles Times‘The Long Form is an absorbing and profound novel in which Kate Briggs breathes extraordinary life into the quiet moments of a young woman: one who is also a new mother, a reader, a daughter, a friend. With every carefully weighted sentence, action and thought, one is immersed in the radical generosity of this writing, its principles of collectivity and its feminist commitment to making the smallest, most everyday act worthy of consideration within a literary canon. A beautifully written book about the art of reading, of criticism, and of surviving through the strangest yet most normal of times.’ — Preti Taneja, author of Aftermath‘Ostensibly about a single day in the lives of a new mother and her infant, The Long Form – with its recursive structure, its subtle connections and reverberations, its attentiveness to physical and social life, and its animated conversation with other works of fiction and theory – presents the novel form as the most elastic of containers. Kate Briggs is a brilliant writer and thinker.’ — Kathryn Scanlan, author of Kick the Latch‘Kate Briggs treats the quotidian rhythms of Helen and Rose, mother and baby, with unusual attentiveness, perspicacity and, most importantly, largeness of thought. This makes The Long Form a radical, celebratory and quite magical consideration of the profound creative possibilities inherent in, and intrinsic to, everyday experience. It’s such a lively and generous book.’ —Wendy Erskine, author of Dance Move‘The Long Form looks at this detail within the context of the structures that surround it, and in doing so Kate Briggs has built a novel that is simultaneously warm and exact, far-reaching and meticulous, generous and wise.’ —Saba Sams, author of Send Nudes‘Briggs is a fantastic writer: that is clear by the end of this eminently strange novel…Briggs has written a work that will constantly reward a re-reading, with a voice that combines a deep complexity with moments of piercing clarity. It is an intelligent and well-read book: but it is also emphatically convincing and moving.’ — Patrick Maxwell, The Big Issue‘[T]his is a novel on novel-ness, both of the new baby and the new possibilities for form. Briggs’s project is to try and break the novel and unfurl this transcendent vision where each element and character, however minor and tangential, is equally important…. [Let] there be trumpets, heralding Briggs and the possibilities of this long form.’ — Jennifer Kabat, 4Columns‘[The Long Form] offers another form of protest, a call to action. Let us be enacted upon by other bodies – human, non-human, literary, all. Let us stretch and lunge, affect one another’s rhythms, converse with cultural histories, interrupt those histories, burst open doors, and, with all the care, softness, and curiosity that any new life might inspire, expand and deepen.’ — Georgie Devereux, The Rumpus‘Kate Briggs’s This Little Art shares some wonderful qualities with Barthes’s own work – the wit, thoughtfulness, invitation to converse, and especially the attention to the ordinary and everyday in the context of meticulously examined theoretical and scholarly questions. This is a highly enjoyable read: informative and stimulating for anyone interested in translation, writing, language, and expression.’ — Lydia Davis, author of Can’t and Won’t (Praise for This Little Art)‘I have been thinking, many weeks after having finished it, of Kate Briggs’s truly lovely This Little Art, a book-length essay on translation that's as wry and thoughtful and probing as any book I’ve read in the past year. My favourite works are those in which one feels the writer wrestling with genre even as she is writing; Kate Briggs does this with her own kind of magic, never failing to write beguilingly and intelligently and passionately about the little art of translation, which in the end shows itself to be not so little, at all.’ — Lauren Groff, author of Matrix (Praise for This Little Art)

Read more less

Book Synopsis‘I will write to avenge my people.’ It was as a young woman that Annie Ernaux first wrote these words in her diary, giving a name to her purpose in life as a writer. She returns to them in her stirring defence of literature and of political writing in her Nobel Lecture, delivered in Stockholm on 7 December 2022. To write of her own life, she asserts, is to ‘shatter the loneliness of experiences endured and repressed’; to mine individual experience is to find collective emancipation. Ernaux’s speech is a bold assertion of the capacity of writing to give people a sense of their own worth, and of one writer’s commitment to bearing witness to life, its joys and its injustices.Trade Review‘Ernaux has inherited de Beauvoir’s role of chronicler to a generation.’ — Margaret Drabble, New Statesman‘Her work attests to the ways in which an individual story is linked to shared histories and her documentation of personal oppression is part of a struggle for collective freedom.’ — Jessica Andrews, Elle UK

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis volume of John Muir's selected writings chronicles the key turning points in his life and study of the American wilderness. The Story of My Boyhood and Youth is Muir's account of his childhood on a Wisconsin farm, where his interest in nature was first piqued; in The Mountains of California, The Yosemite, and Travels in Alaska we follow him on long journeys into stunning mountain ranges and valleys, where he records native flora and fauna and finds proof of his theories of the effect of glaciers on landscape formation. These four full-length works--along with a selection of important essays also included here--helped galvanize American naturalists, leading to the founding of the Sierra Club and several national parks. In these pages, written with meticulous thoroughness and an impassioned lyricism, we witness Muir's awakening to the incredible beauty of our planet, and the honing of an eye turned as acutely toward the scientific as the spiritual.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis collection of essays celebrates 10 years of the SI Leeds Literary prize for unpublished fiction by Black and Asian women writers. These are important words spoken by important women about the lives they have lived, their experiences, and all the things they’ve really wanted to write about but have had trouble getting commissioned, due to narrow expectations of the publishing industry. Essays include: Why I Write, Discouragement and Courage, The Versions of Me You Do Not See, Three Wise Women, Writing, Race and Sex. Contributing writers include Suad Kamardeen, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Gail Boland, Irenosen Okojie, Wenyan Lu, Amita Murray, Mahsuda Snaith, Shereen Tadros, Winnie M Li, Fiona Goh, Saima Mir, Huma Qureshi.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis new selection of essays by Oscar Wilde show-cases the varied aspects of his genius. For Pearson, the biographer, the essays and dialogues illustrate the many faces of Wilde's extraordinary character: wit, romancer, talker, lecturer, humanist and scholar. The ideas expressed remain remarkably relevant to modern readers, whilst his popularity remains undiminished.Trade Review"First, it is an elegant linen-bound production that gives it a handsome feel in the hand, but then fits neatly into a pocket like something one should never travel without on the train. Moreover, it is purple—one of Wilde’s statement colors—which as a cover for Wilde’s sparkling prose renders it heliotrope with diamonds...it is a book that should always be with us when there are no flowers to look at and we want something to stir the intelligence." —John Cooper, Oscar Wilde in America (blog) “The release of this lovely volume from Notting Hill Editions is a timely reminder that Oscar Wilde was more than just a wit, spouting aphorisms and ending up the subject of scandal and imprisonment.” —Shiny New Books

Read more less

Book Synopsis“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness.” —Søren Kierkegaard Duncan Minshull has always walked and in the last twenty years has made use of it by writing and publishing books on the subject. He has described the whys, hows, and wheres of traveling on foot for various magazines and newspapers, including The Times (London), the Financial Times, Condé Nast Traveler, and Vogue. He has edited two other collections on walking: While Wandering: A Walking Companion (originally The Vintage Book of Walking) and The Burning Leg: Walking Scenes from Classic Fiction. Walking and writing have always gone together. Think of the poets who walk out a rhythm for their lines and the novelists who put their characters on a path. But the best insights, the deepest and most joyous examinations of this simple activity are to be found in nonfiction—in essays, travelogues, and memoirs. Beneath My Feet: Writers on Walking rounds up the most memorable walker-writers from the 1700s to the modern day, from country hikers to urban strollers, from the rationalists to the truly outlandish. Follow in the footsteps of William Hazlitt, George Sand, Rebecca Solnit, Will Self, and dozens of others. Keep up with them—and be astonished.Trade Review'Here is a book as certain to lift the spirits as the activity to which it is dedicated: going for a walk. Duncan Minshull is fast emerging as the laureate of walking.' - Andrew Martin, Country Life; ‘This anthology gathers 36 testimonies to walking’s invigorating literary power in particular. Writers from Petrarch to Franz Kafka to Will Self have recorded their enthusiasm for “ambling, rambling, tramping, trekking, stomping and striding.” Higher-quality endorsements of the creative value of walking than these would be hard to find.’ – The Atlantic

Read more less

Book Synopsis"The beautiful rolling hills and coastlines are for all of us. Together, we can reimagine the British countryside (and all it represents) and make space so that everyone is welcomed." Gathering brings together essays by women of colour across the UK writing about their relationships with nature, in a genre long-dominated by male, white, middle-class writers. In redressing this imbalance, this moving collection considers climate justice, neurodiversity, mental health, academia, inherited histories, colonialism, whiteness, music, hiking and so much more. These personal, creative, and fierce essays will broaden both conversations and horizons about our living world, encouraging readers to consider their own experience with nature and their place within it.

Read more less

Book SynopsisSet around a small family farm on the edge of a bog, a few miles from the river Shannon, Minor Monuments is a collection of essays unfolding from the landscape of the Irish midlands. Taking in the physical and philo- sophical power of sound and music, and the effects of Alzheimer’s disease on a family, Ian Maleney questions the nature of home, memory and the complex nature of belonging.

Read more less

Book Synopsis‘Every devotee of literature and art should read this rare, bright-lit, hard-won book, and every student of life — that is to say, everyone.' - Sebastian Barry In this contemplative short narrative, artist and acclaimed writer Sara Baume charts the daily process of making and writing, exploring what it is to create and to try to live as an artist. Elegantly encompassing images from a work-in-progress, handiwork offers observations that are at once gentle and devastating on grief, renewal, and the migration of birds. handiwork is Baume’s non-fiction debut, written with the keen eye for nature and beauty as well as the extraordinary versatility Sara Baume’s fans have come to expect.Trade ReviewLONGLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE ‘Every devotee of literature and art should read this rare, bright-lit, hard-won book, and every student of life — that is to say, everyone.' SEBASTIAN BARRY 'A beautifully written memoir and meditation on grief, nature and the creative process.' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 'Embodies the same thoughtful originality and striking close ups of the natural world as her two novels.' IRISH INDEPENDENT 'Beautiful... could be compared with Denise Riley’s Time Lived, Without Its Flow in how beautifully rendered the passing of days is – or with Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, in how delicately the poetry of the work is presented on the page.' IRISH TIMES 'Its pint-sized print edition is itself an objet d’art.' THE TIMES 'handiwork demands to be experienced and felt. It is no less than Baume's will, her pains, her talents, her tenderness.' RTE.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis'This is an escape story.' Annah, Infinite turns dominant narratives of Paul Gauguin's famous painting Annah la Javanaise (c. 1893-94) on its head. The work argues a simple point: there is the possibility that the portrait is a depiction of a pained child. In highlighting the plausibility of this particular scenario in light of how contradictory facts' surrounding Annah's life have been assembled in historical narratives, the work draws attention to how ablenormativity functions within arts institutions to mask colonial abuses. Taking a closer look at the ways in which Annah la Javanaise, with its attendant mythologies of Annah the person or people, circulates in the world: as commodity of the global financial market, and simultaneously, as contradiction of tropes regarding disabled, Southeast Asian girls in the developing world'. An incisive look at how colonial ableism, racism, and sexism have kept violent legacies on museum walls, it shows empathetic possibilities for imagining otherwise and charts histories of resilience and of disabled people's longstanding activism. Interspersed with the author's own poetry, fiction, and visual art on the painting's subject, this is a book of emotional heft. It asks us all to acknowledge the possibility of pain in every single portrait, as well as the possibility of escape.

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

Book SynopsisWe''ve all heard the phrase & the moment when my life changed forever''. Some of us can even pinpoint it in our own lives; the birth of a child, the acceptance letter to a degree programme, the decision to make a momentous change. The Turning Point is an anthology of personal accounts, showcasing the extraordinary and unexpected moments that have completely altered everyday lives.Each of the 40 stories in this book offers a rare glimpse into the turning point of the writer''s life. Hand-picked as the most extraordinary entries received in an international writing competition, they are eclectic, diverse and entirely immersive. From stray bullets in Los Angeles to falling in love in the Australian countryside, you will find much to enjoy and think about.This is the perfect book to read in snapshots, or to dive into and not resurface until you''ve read every fascinating account. Beautifully presented, it makes an ideal addition to your coffee table, or gift for a loved one. With sections on Love, Changes, Momentous Decisions, Tragedy, Vivid and Learning Moments, every reader is sure to find stories which relate and inspire.Pick up The Turning Point today and find out about the moment when love came along in a note under a windscreen wiper, when the death of a new friend inspired a teenager to live life to its fullest, and more, in this captivating insight into the human condition.

Read more less

Book Synopsis“Criticism is our censorship . . .” So begins one of the greatest invectives against criticism ever written by an artist. Paul Gauguin wrote “Racontars de rapin” only months before he died in 1903, but the essay remained unpublished until 1951. Through discussions of numerous artists, both his contemporaries and predecessors, Gauguin unpacks what he viewed as the mistakes and misjudgments behind much of art criticism, revealing not only how wrong critics’ interpretations have been, but also what it would mean to approach art properly—to really look.Long out of print, this new translation by Donatien Grau includes an introduction that situates the essay within Gauguin’s written oeuvre, as well as explanatory notes. This text sheds light on Gauguin’s conception of art—widely considered a predecessor to Duchamp—and engages with many issues still relevant today: history, novelty, criticism, and the market. His voice feels as fresh, lively, sharp in English now as it did in French over one hundred years ago. Through Gauguin’s final piece of writing, we see the artist in the full throes of passion—for his work, for his art, for the art of others, and against anyone who would stand in his way. As the inaugural publication in David Zwirner Books’s new ekphrasis reader series, Ramblings of a Wannabe Painter sets a perfect tone for the books to come. Poised between writing, art, and criticism, Gauguin brings together many different worlds, all of which should have a seat at the table during any meaningful discussion of art. With the express hope of encouraging open exchange between the world of writing and that of the visual arts, David Zwirner Books is proud to present this new edition of a lost masterpiece. 

Read more less

Book SynopsisMountains Piled upon Mountains features nearly fifty writers from across Appalachia sharing their place-based fiction, literary nonfiction, and poetry. Moving beyond the tradition of transcendental nature writing, much of the work collected here engages current issues facing the region and the planet (such as hydraulic fracturing, water contamination, mountaintop removal, and deforestation), and provides readers with insights on the human-nature relationship in an era of rapid environmental change.This book includes a mix of new and recent creative work by established and emerging authors. The contributors write about experiences from northern Georgia to upstate New York, invite parallels between a watershed in West Virginia and one in North Carolina, and often emphasize connections between Appalachia and more distant locations. In the pages of Mountains Piled upon Mountains are celebration, mourning, confusion, loneliness, admiration, and other emotions and experiences rooted in place but transcending Appalachia's boundaries.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first nonfiction collection by internationally acclaimed writer and translator Amit Majmudar, Black Avatar combines elements of memoir, biography, history, and literary criticism. The eight pieces in this deeply engaging volume reflect author Amit Majmudar’s comprehensive studies of American, European, and Indian traditions, as well as his experiences in both suburban Ohio and the western Indian state of Gujarat. The volume begins with the title piece, a fifteen-part examination of “How Colorism Came to India.” Tracing the evolution of India’s bias in favor of light skin, Majmudar reflects on the effects of colonialism, drawing upon sources ranging from early Sanskrit texts to contemporary film and television. Other essays illuminate subjects both timely and timeless. “The Ramayana and the Birth of Poetry” discusses how suffering is portrayed in art and literature (“The spectrum of suffering: slapstick on one end, scripture on the other, with fiction and poetry . . . in the vastness between them”), while in “Five Famous Asian War Photographs”—a 2018 Best American Essays selection—Majmudar analyzes why these iconic images of atrocity have such emotional resonance. In “Nature/Worship,” another multi-part piece, the author turns his attention to climate change, linking notions of environmentalism to his ancestral tradition of finding divinity within the natural world, connections that form the basis of religious belief. Perhaps the greatest achievement of these wide-ranging essays is the prose itself—learned yet lively, erudite yet accessible—nimbly revealing the workings of a wonderfully original mind.Table of ContentsBlack Avatar: How Colorism Came to IndiaThe Ramayana and the Birth of PoetryMeditations on the LingamFive Famous Asian War PhotographsThe Talking Monkey ProblemIdolatry RocksThe Gita According to Marcus AureliusNature/Worship: Dharmic Environmentalism in an Age of Climate Change

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisEssays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy is a collection of essays written by the famous British philosopher and economist, John Stuart Mill. In the first essay, Mill examines the concept of free trade and argues that it benefits both trading nations. The second essay explores the relationship between demand and supply and the role of consumption in promoting economic growth. The third essay debates the definitions of productive and unproductive labor, arguing that they are not clear-cut categories. The fourth essay delves into the question of why profits are necessary for a capitalist system and whether interest rates are determined by supply and demand. Finally, the fifth essay discusses the nature and scope of political economy, arguing that it should be considered a social science rather than a natural science. Overall, Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy is an insightful book that continues to be studied and debated by economists and scholars today. Mill's ideas on free trade, consumption, labor, profits, and the nature of political economy remain relevant and influential in contemporary economic discourse.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisGeorge Orwell’s essay examines the power of language to shape political ideas. It is about the importance of writing concisely, clearly and precisely and the dangers to our ability to think when language, especially political language, is obscured by vague, clichéd phrases and hackneyed metaphors. In it, he argues that when political discourse trades clarity and precision for stock phrases, the debasement of politics follows. First published in Horizon in 1946, Orwell’s essay was soon recognised as an important text, circulated by newspaper editors to their journalists and reprinted in magazines and anthologies of contemporary writing. It continues to be relevant to our own age.

Read more less

Book SynopsisPassionate, independent-minded nonfiction from the international bestselling author of The Corrections'.Jonathan Franzen''s Freedom' was the literary sensation of 2010, whilst The Corrections' was the best-loved and most written-about novel the previous decade. How to be Alone', is a collection of the personal essays and painstaking, often humorous reportage that have earned Franzen a wide and loyal readership, including what has come to be known as ''The Harper''s Essay'', Franzen''s controversial 1996 look at the fate of the novel. From the sex-advice industry to the way a supermax prison works, from his father''s struggle with Alzheimer''s disease to a rueful account of Franzen''s brief tenure as an Oprah Winfrey author, each piece wrestles with Franzen''s familiar themes: the erosion of civic life and private dignity, and the hidden persistence of loneliness, in postmodern imperial America.These collected essays record what Franzen calls ''a movement away from an angry and frightenTrade Review‘Compelling and invigorating.’The Times ‘A passionate and compelling piece of work … Each page is studded with irresistible writing which leaves you breathless for more. Franzen’s strength is his ability to combine a rigorous intellectual appraoch with an upbeat energy, using language which touches the heart as surely as the head.’Time Out ‘Oprah was right. Franzen is conflicted. That’s what makes him a trustworthy, sceptical essayist.’FT

Read more less

Book SynopsisSima Qian tells the story of the First Emperor, founder of the Qin dynasty, in whose reign the Great Wall was built and whose tomb was guarded by the famous terracotta warriors excavated in 1974. His account details the ruthless exercise of power but also the creation of an empire that endured until 1911.Trade Review...vivid, near contemporary account... * CH, The Independent *Its vast scope can guide you to places they never reach - such as third-century BC China, with imperial historian Sima Qian, * Boyd Tonkin, The Independent *Table of ContentsThe Birth of the First Emperor ; An Assassination Attempt ; The Biography of the Chief Minister of Qin ; The Builder of the Great Wall ; The Annals of Qin ; The Treatises ; The Story of the Rebel Xiang Yu ; The Story of the Rebel Chen Sheng

Read more less

Book SynopsisWinner of the 2020 Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, France''s best foreign book of the year.Astounding' Sebastian BarryA masterpiece' Ayad AkhtarThis little book is ruminative, humane, and gorgeously precise'Jonathan LethemIn this genre-defying book, best-selling memoirist and critic Daniel Mendelsohn explores the mysterious links between the randomness of the lives we lead and the artfulness of the stories we tell.Combining memoir, biography, history, and literary criticism, Three Rings weaves together the stories of three exiled writers who turned to the classics of the past to create masterpieces of their own-works that pondered the nature of narrative itself.Erich Auerbach, the Jewish philologist who fled Hitler''s Germany and wrote his classic study of Western literature, Mimesis, in Istanbul.Francois Fenelon, the seventeenth-century French archbishop whose ingenious sequel to the Odyssey,The Adventures of Telemachus a veiled critique of the Sun King and the best-selling book in Trade Review‘Exquisite … Ornate and oneiric, the results are well worth circling and circling back to’New York Times Book Review ‘As always, the author's voice blends authority with considerable warmth and charm, luring readers into his complex intellectual enthusiasms … Three Rings, a short but profoundly moving work, clings with tenacity to a belief in the regenerative power of literature’Wall Street Journal ‘Spectacular … The reader feels the flow of a strong narrative, trusts the author’s seafaring skills and embarks on a brilliant journey … Three Rings is a glorious celebration of multiplicity, diversity, journeys, transformations and our common humanity’Times Literary Supplement ‘Contained in the interwoven circles of this slim, labyrinthine book is a vision that encompasses the world. Part dirge, part memoir, part exegesis, all rhapsody Mendelsohn's anatomy of literature's subtlest pleasures is itself that subtlest of literary pleasures: a masterpiece’Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Homeland Elegies ‘An astounding Borgesian document of clarity and brilliance. A book about telling stories that wanders down the seeming two roads of the Hebrew tradition and the classical, which, like Proust's two ways, might turn out to be one way after all. Three Rings has the keeled force of a long poem’Sebastian Barry ‘Classicist, historian, memoirist, cultural critic, with consummate skill and the sharp, sympathetic eye of the poet, Daniel Mendelsohn brilliantly combines these roles. Three Rings is a masterly exegesis and demonstration of digression as a high art’Joyce Carol Oates ‘Daniel Mendelsohn's Three Rings is erudition, essayism, and memoir … This little book is ruminative, humane, and gorgeously precise’Jonathan Lethem

Read more less

Book SynopsisCicero (106-43 BC) was the greatest orator of the ancient world and a leading politician of the closing era of the Roman republic. These three dialogues here are among the most accessible of Cicero's philosophical works.Trade ReviewVery accessible... provides much thought-provoking material... will appeal both to those who are already well-versed in philosophy and to those who come new to this discipline. * Marion Gibbs, Classics for All *Table of ContentsIntroduction Note on the Text Select Bibliography A Chronology of Cicero TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS Book 1 Book 2 Preface to Book 3 Preface to Book 4 Book 5 ON OLD AGE ON FRIENDSHIP Appendix: Two Letters to Friends Explanatory Notes

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis Young Monster is a hallucinatory celebration of artists who raise hell, transform their bodies, anger their elders and show their audience dark, disturbing things. What does it mean to be a freak? Why might we be wise to think of the present as a time of monstrosity? And how does the concept of the monster irradiate our thinking about queerness, disability, children and adolescents? From Twin Peaks to Leigh Bowery, Harmony Korine to Alice in Wonderland, This Young Monster gets high on a whole range of riotous art as its voice and form shape-shift, all in the name of dealing with the strange wonders of what Nabokov once called ‘monsterhood’. Ready or not, here they come...Trade Review‘My friend Bruce Hainley had told me about a new book coming out called “This Young Monster,” by Charlie Fox, but I had forgotten all about it until the publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions in London sent me this beautifully designed French-flap-style paperback original. Good God, where did this wise-beyond-his-years 25-year-old critic’s voice come from? His breath of proudly putrefied air is really something to behold. Finally, a new Parker Tyler is on the scene. Yep. Mr. Fox is the real thing.’ — John Waters, New York Times‘This Young Monster is a hybrid animal in its own right, suturing biographical essays with stranger things: a “dumb fan letter” to the Beast, a meandering confession from Alice, bombed out after her many years in Wonderland. ...There’s not enough of this sort of playfulness and frank enthusiasm in art criticism.’ — Olivia Laing, New Statesman‘Surreal and provocative, This Young Monster is both a poignant portrayal of life on the margins, and a joyful salute to a group of people who embraced their misfit status to lead beautifully unconventional lives.’ — Lucy Watson, Financial Times‘A Rimbaud-like moonbeam in written form.’ — Bruce Hainley, author of Under the Sign of [sic]‘Charlie Fox writes about scary and fabulous monsters, but he really writes about culture, which is the monster’s best and only escape. He is a dazzling writer, unbelievably erudite, and this book is a pleasure to read. Fox’s essays spin out across galaxies of knowledge. Domesticating the difficult, he invites us as his readers to become monsters as well.’ — Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick‘A performance as original and audacious as any of the characters within – it crackles off the page, roaring and clawing its way into the world, powered by a brilliant vagabond electricity.’ — Chloe Aridjis, author of Book of Clouds ‘Charlie Fox is a ferociously gifted critic, whose prose, like a punk Walter Pater’s, attains pure flame. Fox’s sentences, never “matchy-matchy”, clash with orthodoxy; I love how extravagantly he leaps between different cultural climes, and how intemperately – and with what impressive erudition! – he pledges allegiance to perversity. Take This Young Monster with you to a desert island; his bons mots will supply you with all the protein you need.’ — Wayne Koestenbaum, author of HumiliationTable of ContentsSelf-Portrait as a Werewolf | 'The Little Boy Who Can't Be Damaged' | Untitled (Freak) | Herr Fassbinder's Trip to Heaven | 'I Just Adore Extremes' | Transformer | The Dead-End Kids | Spook House | For Arthur and All the Other Mutts

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe climate crisis is here. Our chance to stop it has come and gone, but this doesn't have to mean the world is ending.If you care about the planet, and about the people and animals who live on it, there are two ways to think about this. You can keep on hoping that catastrophe is preventable, and feel ever more frustrated or enraged by the world's inaction. Or you can accept that disaster is coming, and begin to rethink what it means to have hope.'The honesty and realism of Jonathan Franzen's writings on climate have been widely denounced and just as widely celebrated. Here, in his definitive statement on the subject, Franzen confronts the world's failure to avert destabilising climate change and takes up the question: Now what?Trade Review Praise for The End of the End of the Earth: ‘… by refusing to hope for the impossible, Franzen, improbably, manages to produce a volume that feels, if not hopeful, then at least not hopeless. There’s nothing he can do – there’s probably nothing any of us can do – to avert or even alleviate the coming catastrophe. But for now, he’s here and he’s alive, and over the course of these essays he offers us a series of partial, tentative answers to the question he poses himself at the beginning: “ How do we find meaning in our actions when the world seems to be coming to an end?” Guardian ‘Can be read, in part, as a welcome alternative to the current, dominant American political tone of one-note belligerence’ Observer ‘Franzen shows himself to be the kind of unacademic critic who recognises and does not disapprove of the Common Reader’s natural tendency to feel for the characters the author has brought into being’ Scotsman

Read more less

Book SynopsisGeorge Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. Inside the Whale, the eighth in the Orwell’s Essays series, discusses Henry Miller’s controversial Tropic of Cancer, and considers the driving power behind the great books of the 1930s. Comparing Miller with other literary giants, Orwell lambasts the notion that all literature is good, forcing the reader to think for themselves, with his final words ringing in their ears: ‘five thousand novels are published in England every year and four thousand nine hundred of them are tripe.’

Read more less

Book SynopsisMore than a memoir, My Crazy Century explores the ways in which the epoch and its dominating totalitarian ideologies impacted the lives, character, and morality of Klíma's generation. Klíma's story begins in the 1930s, in the Terezin concentration camp outside of Prague, where he was forced to spend almost four years of his childhood. He reveals how the postwar atmosphere supported and encouraged the spread of Communist principles over the next few decades and how an informal movement to change the system developed inside the Party. These political events form the backdrop to Klíma's personal experiences, with the arrest and trial of his father; the early revolt of young writers against socialist realism; his first literary successes; and his travels to the free part of Europe, which strengthened his awareness of living as part of a colossal lie. Klíma also captures the brief period of liberation during 1968's Prague Spring, in which he played an active role; the Soviet invasion that crushed its political reforms; the rise of the dissident movement; and the collapse of the Communist regime in the middle of the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Including insightful essays on topics related to social history, political thinking, love, and freedom, My Crazy Century provides a profoundly rich and moving personal history of national evolution. Ivan Klíma's first autobiography and perhaps his most significant work, it encapsulates a remarkable life largely lived under occupation.Trade ReviewA harrowing yet often uplifting account of living and working under totalitarian rule * Boston Globe *His [Klima's] impassioned memoir is emblematic of Czechoslovakia's struggle - and perhaps the struggle of much of central Europe - during the dark years between the Second World War and the 'Velvet Revolution' of 1989. * Daily Telegraph *As a writer, Klima is more reporter than fantasist. He observes and broods and then he writes it down... Klima has never been one for account-settling and acerbity and My Crazy Century is as interesting for its ruminative account of his emotional and personal turmoils as it is for its chronicling of postwar Czech history. * The Guardian *More than a memoir of an extraordinary life, it is an account of an age - and of the destructiveness of successive and symbiotic forms of totalitarianism, and of a critical intelligence that survived them. * Jewish Chronicle *Table of ContentsMore than a memoir, My Crazy Century explores the ways in which the epoch and its dominating totalitarian ideologies impacted the lives, character, and morality of Klima's generation. Klima's story begins in the 1930s, in the Terezin concentration camp outside of Prague, where he was forced to spend almost four years of his childhood. He reveals how the postwar atmosphere supported and encouraged the spread of Communist principles over the next few decades and how an informal movement to change the system developed inside the Party. These political events form the backdrop to Klima's personal experiences, with the arrest and trial of his father; the early revolt of young writers against socialist realism; his first literary successes; and his travels to the free part of Europe, which strengthened his awareness of living as part of a colossal lie. Klima also captures the brief period of liberation during 1968's Prague Spring, in which he played an active role; the Soviet invasion that crushed its political reforms; the rise of the dissident movement; and the collapse of the Communist regime in the middle of the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Including insightful essays on topics related to social history, political thinking, love, and freedom, My Crazy Century provides a profoundly rich and moving personal history of national evolution. Ivan Klima's first autobiography and perhaps his most significant work, it encapsulates a remarkable life largely lived under occupation.

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn account of Oscar Wilde's spiritual journey while in prison, and describes his new, shocking conviction that 'the supreme vice is shallowness'. It also includes further letters to his wife, his friends, the Home Secretary, himself, as well as "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", the poem about a man sentenced to hang for the murder of woman he loved.Trade Review'De Profundis' remains Wilde's greatest piece of prose-writing -- Colm Tóibín

Read more less

Book SynopsisA deeply moving and revelatory reading experience, the essays collected inPortrait of an Island on Fireform a searing account of Mauritius at a crucial moment in its history. Unceasing in its critiques of various abuses of power, in its unpicking of the ills at the core of Mauritian society and their roots, the collection is a milestone in thinking about the lasting social and political effects of colonialism and how they play out at the level of government policy, the handling of environmental issues, in schools, all the way down to the way that individuals relate to one another.

Read more less

Book Synopsis'Hitchens presents a George Orwell fit for the twenty-first century.' --Boston Globe In this widely acclaimed biographical essay, the masterful polemicist Christopher Hitchens assesses the life, the achievements, and the myth of the great political writer and participant George Orwell. True to his contrarian style, Hitchens is both admiring and aggressive, sympathetic yet critical, taking true measure of his subject as hero and problem. Answering both the detractors and the false claimants, Hitchens tears down the façade of sainthood erected by the hagiographers and rebuts the critics point by point. He examines Orwell and his perspectives on fascism, empire, feminism, and Englishness, as well as his outlook on America, a country and culture toward which he exhibited much ambivalence. Whether thinking about empires or dictators, race or class, nationalism or popular culture, Orwell's moral outlook remains indispensable in a world that has undergone vast changes in the seven decades since his death. Combining the best of Hitchens' polemical punch and intellectual elegance in a tightly woven and subtle argument, this book addresses not only why Orwell matters today, but how he will continue to matter in a future, uncertain world.

Read more less

Book SynopsisFrank O'Connor's The Lonely Voice is a classic work on the art of the short story, now reprinted with a new introduction by acclaimed author Kevin Barry. This edition connects two generations of Irish storytelling masters.

Read more less