Essays Books

Book SynopsisIn Praise of Disobedience draw on works from a single miraculous year in which Oscar Wilde published the larger part of his greatest prose - the year he came into maturity as an artist. Before the end of 1891, he had written the first of his phenomenally successful plays and met the young man who would win his heart, beginning the love affair that would lead to imprisonment and public infamy. In a witty introduction, playwright, novelist and Wilde scholar Neil Bartlett explains what made this point in the writer's life central to his genius and why Wilde remains a provocative and radical figure to this day.Included here are the entirety of Wilde's foray into political philosophy, The Soul of Man Under Socialism; the complete essay collection Intentions; selections from The Portrait of Dorian Gray as well as its paradoxical and scandalous preface; and some of Wilde's greatest fictions for children. Each selection is accompanied by stimulating and enlightening annotations. A delight for fans of Oscar Wilde, In Praise of Disobedience will restore and revitalize an often misunderstood legacy.Trade ReviewI loved Wilde's The Soul of Man Under Socialism - loved its uncompromising approach to the crushing problem of social and economic inequality . Wilde takes no prisoners from the very outset -- Will Self * Guardian *Wilde offers us an important reminder of virtues we as a society may have for a time lost: the need to strive for utopias; the inevitability of socialism if our world is to survive; the need to reinvigorate humanity's spirit of rebelliousness and disobedience, and to challenge, not accept, the injustices and inequalities we see all around us. The world needs Oscar Wilde and his daring, beautiful ideas today more than ever. * PopMatters *When I feel myself becoming gloomy or pessimistic, the book that reminds me that change and optimism are possible is Oscar Wilde's The Soul of Man Under Socialism, a wise and witty essay that recommends both equality and indolence, and appears to believe you can't have one without the other. -- Hanif Kureishi

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Book SynopsisWhat can Alice in Wonderland teach us about childhood? Could reading Conversations with Friends guide us through first love? Does Esther Greenwood’s glittering success and subsequent collapse in The Bell Jar help us understand ambition? And, finally, what can we learn about death from Virginia Woolf?Literature matters. Not only does it provide escapism and entertainment, but it also holds a mirror up to our lives to show us aspects of ourselves we may not have seen or understood. From jealousy to grief, fierce love to deep hatred, our inner lives become both stranger and more familiar when we explore them through fiction. Josh Cohen, a psychoanalyst and Professor of Modern Literary Theory, delves deep into the inner lives of the most memorable and vivid characters in literature. His analysis of figures such as Jay Gatsby and Mrs Dalloway offers insights into the greatest questions about the human experience, ones that we can all learn from. He walks us through the different stages of existence, from childhood to old age, showing that literature is much more than a refuge from the banality and rigour of everyday life – through the experiences of its characters, it can show us ways to be wiser, more open and more self-aware.

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Book SynopsisContemporary art is obsessed with the politics of identity. Visit any contemporary gallery, museum or theatre, and chances are the art on offer will be principally concerned with race, gender, sexuality, power and privilege.The quest for truth, freedom and the sacred has been thrust aside to make room for identity politics. Mystery, individuality and beauty are out; radical feminism, racial grievance and queer theory are in. The result is a drearily predictable culture and the narrowing of the space for creative self-expression and honest criticism.Sohrab Ahmari's book is a passionate cri de coeur against this state of affairs. The New Philistines takes readers deep inside a cultural scene where all manner of ugly, inept art is celebrated so long as it toes the ideological line, and where the artistic glories of the Western world are revised and disfigured to fit the rigid doctrines of identity politics.The degree of politicisation means that art no longer performs its historical function, as a mirror and repository of the human spirit - something that should alarm not just art lovers but anyone who cares about the future of liberal civilisation.Trade Review"Sohrab Ahmari's polemic against the contemporary art world is angry, witty, uncompromising, and utterly unanswerable... Tremendously entertaining and thought-provoking." - Andrew Roberts, Commentary; "An elegant and necessary salvo in a new culture war." - Quillette; "An ambitious new series that tackles the controversy of the topics explored with a mixture of intelligence and forthright argument from some excellent writers." The Observer; "This short book is reminiscent of pre-novelist Tom Wolfe books like The Painted Word and From Bauhaus to Our House, which told amusing but depressing tales about lefty politics making their way into the art world, making both art and politics worse in the process." - National Review

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Book SynopsisIn Praise of Disobedience draws on works from a single miraculous year in which Oscar Wilde published the larger part of his greatest works in prose - the year he came into maturity as an artist. Before the end of 1891, he had written the first of his phenomenally successful plays and met the young man who would win his heart, beginning the love affair that would lead to imprisonment and public infamy. In a witty introduction, playwright, novelist and Wilde scholar Neil Bartlett explains what made this point in the writer's life central to his genius and why Wilde remains a provocative and radical figure to this day. Included here are the entirety of Wilde's foray into political philosophy, The Soul of Man Under Socialism; the complete essay collection Intentions; selections from The Picture of Dorian Gray as well as its paradoxical and scandalous preface; and some of Wilde's greatest fictions for children. Each selection is accompanied by stimulating and enlightening annotations. A delight for fans of Oscar Wilde, In Praise of Disobedience will revitalize an often misunderstood legacy.Trade ReviewWilde offers us an important reminder of virtues we as a society may have for a time lost: the need to strive for utopias; the inevitability of socialism if our world is to survive; the need to reinvigorate humanity's spirit of rebelliousness and disobedience, and to challenge, not accept, the injustices and inequalities we see all around us. The world needs Oscar Wilde and his daring, beautiful ideas today more than ever. -- Hans Rollman * PopMatters *

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Book SynopsisDecades of violence and chaos have generated a political and intellectual hysteria-ranging from imperial atavism to paranoia about invading or hectically breeding Muslim hordes-that has affected even the most intelligent in Anglo-America. In Bland Fanatics, Pankaj Mishra examines this hysteria and its fantasists, taking on its arguments and the atmosphere in which it has festered and become influential. In essays that grapple with colonialism, human rights, and the doubling down of liberalism against a background of faltering economies and weakening Anglo-American hegemony, Mishra confronts writers from Jordan Peterson and Niall Ferguson to Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. With a newly written introduction, these essays provide a vantage point from which to look seriously at the current crisis.Trade Reviewliterary iconoclast [and] maverick political thinker-edgy, sly and idiosyncratic-weaving a kind of witchcraft with the wounded frankness of prose -- (praise for Pankaj Mishra) * Financial Express *Bracing ... The first essential read of the Trump Era -- (Praise for Age of Anger) * Vogue *This important, erudite book proves the deepest roots of our inflamed moment -- (in praise of Age of Anger) * New York Times *An original attempt to explain today's paranoid hatreds ... Insightful ... Iconoclastic ... Mishra shocks on many levels -- (Praise for Age of Anger) * The Economist *A searing attack on the assumption that modernity is synonymous with progress -- (Praise for Age of Anger) * Wall Street Journal *Urgently vigorous ... It is Age of Anger's singular ambition to give the world as we have it a past, a how-we-got-here, a where-the-mistakes-lie ... The book marks an important advance in our most urgent discourse -- (Praise for Age of Anger) * The National *A bowel-churning kick in the guts ... [Pankaj Mishra's] vision is unusually broad, accommodating and resistant to categorisation. It is the kind of vision the world needs right now -- (Praise for Age of Anger) * Financial Times *The ideal writer to diagnose our current moment * Los Angeles Review of Books *Bracing and illuminating ... Mishra writes with ... style, energy and incision ... [He] dwells in the realm of ideas and emotions, which get short shrift in most accounts of global politics ... A decent liberalism would read sharp critics like Mishra and learn. * New York Times Book Review *

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Book SynopsisFrom the acclaimed author of How Will Capitalism End? comes an omnibus of long-form critical essays engaging with leading economists and thinkers. Critical Encounters draws on Wolfgang Streeck's inimitable writing for the London Review of Books and New Left Review, among other publications. It opens with treatments of two contrasting historical eras - factory capitalism and financialization - and three of the world's major economies: the United States, France and Germany. Delving into the world of ideas, Streeck discusses the work of Quinn Slobodian, Mark Blyth, Jürgen Habermas and Perry Anderson. Finally, he zooms out to compare his home discipline of sociology to natural history, giving a remarkable and non-deterministic reading of Charles Darwin. In the preface, Streeck reflects on the art (or craft) of book reviewing and the continuing merits of the book form. Critical Encounters also includes a series of 'Letters from Europe', penned as the coronavirus descended upon the Continent.Trade ReviewSynthesises the various strands of left crisis theory into a convincing proposal, as strong psychologically as it is on economics. -- Paul Mason * Guardian, Books of the Year 2016 [on How Will Capitalism End?] *A must-read. * Financial Times, Best Books of 2016 [on How Will Capitalism End?] *Streeck sees a destructive convergence of three fixed trends in late capitalism: a declining rate of economic growth, soaring overall indebtedness, and rising economic inequality in both income and wealth. His work interlocks with recent dark conclusions by Robert J. Gordon, Thomas Piketty, and Wendy Brown, among others. -- Norman Rush * New York Review of Books [on How Will Capitalism End?] *Streeck's sweeping and empirically founded inquiry reminds one of Karl Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. -- Jürgen Habermas [on Buying Time]A superbly provocative work of political economy. -- Aditya Chakrabortty * Guardian [on Buying Time] *A compelling and distinctive analysis of the current political moment. -- Hans Kundnani * The World Today *

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Book SynopsisChristopher Bollas presents us with a new literary form in his Conversations: twenty-three unique dialogues to captivate, amuse, and inspire. The psychoanalyst Paula Heimann asked: ‘Who is speaking? To whom? About what? And why now?’ We speak with the voice and position of many others – mothers, fathers, siblings, teachers – and ordinary conversation therefore stages the history of our interpersonal engagements. Heimann’s questions also apply when we talk to ourselves, and our inner dialogues reveal the hidden genius of our private world in which we are both actor and audience, poet and reader, politician and electorate. It's quite a ride, and an art form all of its own.Trade ReviewChristopher Bollas brings a psychoanalytic and absurdist mind to ordinary conversations, lifting them into a form akin to theatre. Funny, larky, and existential, Bollas turns the private inside out and these exchanges voice the surprising, yet recognisable, inner feelings of our contemporary moment. -- Mona SimpsonBollas invites the fascinating possibility that psychoanalysis is akin to poetic conjecture Why am I here What are we doing in this room together I don’t know I don’t know Could it be Why me Mama Papa This funny sad book wanders through the everyday and reflects on the nothingness of being Disappearing down the drains - the uncanny fear of the loss of self. Terror Why me Why me -- Anish KapoorTable of ContentsContents Brand new Can I help you? It feels good Customer relations Shopping Memories are made of this On board Reading Looking through the window The overall situation What is happening? Do I look stupid? Along came a spider The man with no worries What is it? Cyberspace On the same page Self with other Should we enter? The delay A thought searching for a thinker Being and nothingness So I went down to shop Afternote

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year 2022. Wales's best-loved contemporary poet, one of the major poets of our endangered environment, returns to prose in Roots Home. As in At the Source (2008), she does something unusual with form. She combines two elements. Seven vivid essay-meditations, informed by (among others) Dylan Thomas, George Herbert and W. B. Yeats, explore the ways in which poetry bears witness to what is and what might be, presence and transcendence in a threatened world. The meditations precede a journal that runs from January 2018 to December 2020, concluding with a poem entitled 'Winter Solstice' - three years of living close to animals, mountains, and (in particular) trees, in human intimacy and lockdown. 'Listen! They are whispering / now while the world talks, / and the ice melts, / and the seas rise. / Look at the trees!...' This is necessary work. As she declares in 'Why I Write', the first meditation in Roots Home: 'Morning begins with my journal. I write in it most days, though not every day. It is friend and listener, to record, remember, rage and rhapsodise, a place for requiem and celebration. Words hold detail which might be forgotten - the way the hare halted as it crossed the lawn, the field where a rainbow touched down across the valley, the different voices of wind, or water, the close and distant territorial arias of May blackbirds.'Trade Review'Gillian Clarke is one of the most widely respected and deeply loved poets in the world' - Carol Ann Duffy

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Book SynopsisA The Spectator and Observer Book of the Year. The NB column in the Times Literary Supplement, signed at the foot by J.C., occupied the back page of the paper for thirteen years. For a decade before that, it was in the middle pages. That's roughly 60,000 words a year for twenty-three years. The purpose of the initials was not to disguise the author, but to offer complete freedom to the persona. J.C. was irreverent and whimsical. The column punctured pomposity, hypocrisy and cant in the literary world - as one correspondent put it: 'skewering contemporary absurdities, whether those resulting from identity politics or from academic jargon'. Readers came to expect reports from the Basement Labyrinth, where all executive decisions are made, and where annual literary prizes were judged and administered. These included the Most Unoriginal Title Prize - for a new book bearing a title that had been used by several other authors (eg, The Kindness of Strangers); the Incomprehensibility Prize, for impenetrable academic writing; the Jean-Paul Sartre Prize for Prize Refusal, and the All Must Have Prizes Prize, for authors who have never won anything. Readers of NB by J.C. will find an off-beat guide to our cultural times. The book begins in 2001 and proceeds to 2020. The substantial Introduction offers a history of the TLS itself from birth through the precarious stages of its adaptation and survival.Trade Review'the last unmissable proper diary column left in journalism' - Simon Jenkins; 'The secret of J.C.'s weekly column is its unique mix of anonymity with intimacy: this "stranger", whom we meet over our morning coffee, is the most discreet and delightful of guides to what's happening - good or mostly bad - in the literary world, with all its pretensions, follies, and occasional triumphs. I especially relished J.C.'s prizes - for the worst prose or the silliest blurb. Then again, leave it to J.C. to find the rare edition, the forgotten book of poems that deserves another look. True wit, coupled with wisdom: it's the rarest of writerly feats.' - Marjorie Perloff; 'I receive immense pleasure from J.C.'s Times Literary Supplement columns. Something more than pleasure: warmth, laughter, gratitude (especially when he is nailing academic unreadability)...' - Vivian Gornick

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Hugh McIlvanney is a living legend in sports journalism. A regular winner of the fiercely contested UK Sports Writer of the Year award, he also has the unique distinction of being the only sports writer to have been voted Journalist of the Year. He is respected for his incisive commentaries and perceptive analyses of football and racing, but this collection contains the best of his writing on his first great passion, boxing. The book features in-depth analysis of the build-up, climax and aftermath of over 25 showdowns including: Muhammad Ali vs. Henry Cooper (1966) Joe Frazier vs. Muhammad Ali (1971) George Foreman vs. Ken Norton (1974) Eusibio Pedvoza vs. Barry McGuigan (1985) Lloyd Honeyghan vs. Marlon Starling (1989) Mike Tyson vs. Frank Bruno (1989) An essential read for boxing lovers of all ages with writing so vivid that readers will feel like they have a ringside seat.

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Book SynopsisPolitics, religion, culture, travel, science and technology, family life: nothing escaped the eye and pen of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, nineteenth-century America's most famous writer and a legend in his own lifetime. Though chiefly known today for his classic novels of childhood, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and for his short stories, he produced even more nonfiction of an impressive quality.Twain lived a life as exciting as his fiction, and in his Autobiography we find him running wild, like the heroes of his novels, in the countryside around his childhood home in Missouri and navigating the treacherous waters of the Mississippi River as a trained steamboat pilot, while his letters show him travelling thousands of miles over the United States on hectic lecture tours (he was a great showman, raconteur and performer of his own works), hobnobbing with princes and presidents and being lionized in the capitals of Europe.His trademark wit, candour, sarcasm and irrepressible humour shine through on every page of this selection, but here too, beyond the entertainer, we discover in his speeches and essays the social and moral issues - slavery, imperialism - which concerned him, and meet the private man behind that towering public figure, whose long marriage never lost its romance, but who bore the sorrow of losing two of his three daughters while still in their twenties. A sometimes moving, sometimes hilarious and always riveting read.

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Book Synopsis"Among the earliest artistic descriptions of the hallucinogenic experience in European literature, the four pieces in this volume document Gautier’s and Baudelaire’s own involvement in the Club of Assassins, who met under the auspices of Dr Moreau to investigate the mind-enhancing effects of hashish, wine and opium. As well as providing an absorbing account of nineteenth-century drug use, Hashish, Wine, Opium captures the spirit of French Romanticism in its struggle to free the mind from the shackles of the humdrum and the conventional, and serves as a fascinating prologue to the psychedelic literature of the following century."Trade ReviewReveals to us enchanting and visionary landscapes, and beguiles us with vegetable correspondences, musical transformations and watery expanses. -- Margaret Drabble

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Book SynopsisThis is a book about remoteness: a memoir of places observed in solitude, of the texture of life through the quiet course of the seasons in the far north of Scotland. It is a book grounded in the singularity of one place - a house in northern Aberdeenshire - and threaded through with an unshowy commitment to the lost and the forgotten. In these painterly essays Davidson reflects on art, place, history and landscape. Distance and Memory is his testament to the cold, clear beauty of the north.Trade Review'This is a poet's book, his mind wide open to the cultures of the world, especially of the north, specifically Aberdeenshire. The language is luscious, musical and precise, rich with quotation and the cultures of, especially, northern Europe, from minerology and industry to poetry, painting, music.' --Gillian Clarke, National Poet of Wales Praise for THE IDEA OF THE NORTH by Peter Davidson: 'A masterpiece... beyond being merely clever or wise: a beautiful book.' --Scottish Review of BooksTable of ContentsForeword by Robert Macfarlane Prologue The Green Evenings Secret Hills SPRING Orkney Northern Waters Spar Boxes, Northern England SUMMER Summer in the North The Rich Boys of Bygdoy and other fragments of a summer A Northward Journey and a Summer Storm HARVEST Bringing Home a Portrait by Cosmo Alexander Painting Northern Scotland The Food of the North (with Jane Stevenson) THE BACK END OF THE YEAR Visits in Autumn A Letter from Copenhagen The Grim Consolations of the North The Aesthetics of Remoteness and the North WINTER Winter in the North Epilogue: The Snow over Madrid Acknowledgements

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Book SynopsisBeginning in 1968, fifty-five personal essays and poems reveal the power of Ireland’s finest writers to delve into the details of Irish life with warmth, sincerity and wit. Here, side by side, are stories around the first moon landing, the eruption of violence in the North, the visit to Ireland by Ronald Reagan, the Eurovision Song Contest, 9/11, direct provision centres, the Celtic Tiger and its crash, great sporting moments, Edna O’Brien, Seán Ó Ríordáin, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nelson Mandela, Steve Jobs and Sinéad O’Connor, emigration, moving statues, Irish weather and water, first love and first jobs, wedding day dresses, setting up home, parenthood, illness, loss and starting over. As a record of Ireland from wonderful and unexpected angles, Miscellany50 will amuse and intrigue for many years to come. Originally commissioned for performance at Miscellany50 Live radio festival weekend in late 2018, this is a unique collection in a beautifully illustrated volume.

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Book SynopsisThe New Frontier is a landmark publication of writing from the Irish Border, composed of non-fiction, fiction and poetry – it is a chorus of voices from some of the island’s greatest writers, that conveys in its multiplicity the true meaning of our border. At a time when the division of our shared island has once again become an international concern, the Border now a threshold between Europe and the United Kingdom, The New Frontier seeks to explore the meaning of this partition in the 21st century for those people that inhabit that divide. This collection of writing ultimately poses the question: What does it mean to be Irish, Northern Irish, or British in the modern age, and what does it mean to live on a threshold between a kingdom and a republic? The New Frontier will undoubtedly become a key cultural and literary touchstone. This anthology considers the border, and our historical divisions, through literature, by inviting writers from border areas to respond imaginatively and instinctively. By writing the land, writing the body, writing the lived experiences of this complex and misunderstood part of Ireland, The New Frontier looks to reclaim the border region from decades of misinterpretation and misunderstanding. Featuring writing from: Conor O’Callaghan, Darran Anderson, Garrett Carr, Luke Cassidy, Nidhi Zak, Kerri ní Dochartaigh, Michael Hughes, Séamas O’Reilly, Pat McCabe, Lias Saoudi, Maureen Boyle, Emily Cooper, Dean Fee, Jill Crawford, Annemarie ní Chuirrean, Peter Hollywood, John Kelly, Michelle Gallen, Marcel Krueger, Eoghan Walls, Orla McAlinden, Bronagh McAtasney, Mícheál McCann, Jess McKinney and Maria McManus

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Book SynopsisPacked with ideas and inspiration, The Mystery Feast offers numerous pathways into the magical world of storytelling. Beginning with a poem, 'All we do', Booker prize-winning novelist Ben Okri presents his considered thoughts on the purpose and meaning of stories, concluding with a series of condensed 'Notes to the modern storyteller'. The collection is completed with a 'stoku' - a brief tale on the theme. Based on decades of honing his art, this stimulating booklet gives a glimpse into the mind of a master of contemporary storytelling. 'In every moment, we are part of the infinite stories that the universe is telling us and that we are telling the universe.'Table of Contents1. All we do 2. Under the Sun A meditation on stories Notes to a modern storyteller 3. The story in the next room, A Stoku

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Book SynopsisEdited by Hanan Issa, Durre Shahwar and OEzgur Uyanik. "I felt the city in my muscles, my saliva. I wanted to be changed. I wanted to be in love." A young woman weaves her experience of abuse into the folklore of her ancestors. A student addresses his OCD by writing letters. A Paralympic medallist reflects upon his journey into a challenging new lifestyle. From language politics to neurodivergence, cultural heritage to sexual identity, from immigration to race, these are insights shared with great care, sincerity, and often humour. Featuring an unbound range of writers; united by their connection to Wales, but reaching freely across continents. This collection is an open invitation. It is a bringing together of previously untold perspectives: creative essays with no hard lines or prescriptive margins. No normative spotlights, only an open space to speak, and be heard. These are stories told on their own terms.

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Book SynopsisWhere, or what, is home? What has it meant, historically and personally, to be ‘Italian’ or ‘English’, or both in a culture that prefers us to choose? What does it mean to have roots? Or to have left a piece of oneself somewhere long since abandoned? In Dandelions, Thea Lenarduzzi pieces together her family history through four generations’ worth of migration between Italy and England, and the stories scattered like seeds along the way. At the heart of this book is her grandmother Dirce, a former seamstress and a repository of tales that are by turns unpredictable, unreliable, significant. Through the journeys of Dirce and her relatives, from the Friuli to Sheffield and Manchester and back again, a different kind of history emerges. A family memoir rich in folk legends, food, art, politics and literature, Dandelions heralds the arrival of an exceptional writer: bold, joyful and wise.Trade Review‘Dandelions is a book of hauntings, intensely experienced, pierced by occasional terrors, yet irradiated throughout by passionate attachment. Generations of family ghosts wander between Italy and England, their lives summoned from a beloved grandmother’s long memories and the author’s own wide-roaming, often poetic reflections on botany, history and language. Thea Lenarduzzi has spread out before us a feast of sensuous and sensitive, nuanced and deeply appealing testimony to migration, survival, and complicated identities at a time when such thoughtfulness is rare and desperately needed.’ — Marina Warner, author of Inventory of a Life Mislaid‘Beautifully observed and written with heart and an infectious curiosity, Thea Lenarduzzi's Dandelions parses the complex ways in which we live out our histories and carry the past within us, through ritual, food, language and legend. Like rifling through an overflowing drawer or opening an ancient photo album, Lenarduzzi unearths glinting gems of family fiction, introducing us to a shifting cast of memorable characters whose journeys, stories and passions it's our joy to share.’ — Francesca Wade, author of Square Haunting ‘In this subtle and elegant family memoir, Thea Lenarduzzi gathers the ghost seeds between her present life in England and her family’s past in Italy. A meditation on roots, inheritance and homesickness, Dandelions is also a reminder that what will survive of us is love.’ — Frances Wilson, author of Burning Man‘Dandelions is spellbinding. Like the polished beads of a secular rosary, each bearing a remembrance, Lenarduzzi's ancestral memoir conjures intimate histories of migration, love, and loss across decades of passages between Italy and England. Her redoubtable grandmother Dirce will lure you in, as she unfolds fragmentary myths with a sly wit, whispering ascolta, “listen” – and you won't resist.’ — Anna Della Subin, author of Accidental Gods‘Dandelions is a beautiful, precise and exceptionally intelligent family memoir. In it, Lenarduzzi carefully detangles a complex web of interlocking stories, which she finds to be threaded through with warmth, aspiration and hope. In the figure of Dirce we find a kind-hearted grandmother and compendium of stories both – offering wisdom and familial mythology like a Friulian oracle. Dandelions marks the arrival of a stunning new voice.’ — Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment‘This charmingly candid account of the tensions between an English present and an Italian past is also a fascinating family saga, teeming with idiosyncratic life and bringing with it a chunk of history that still conditions both countries today.’ — Tim Parks, author of The Hero’s Way‘Local dialects, language and superstition, Mussolini, Red Brigades and the trials of immigration are woven through this captivating family memoir as it chases a home across three generations of movement between Italy and England and back again. Lenarduzzi transmutes conversations with a formidable grandmother into a prose of many textures and inflections, giving us a story that is as as rich as it is gripping.’ — Lisa Appignanesi, author of Everyday Madness ‘Thea Lenarduzzi has written a profoundly evocative, lyrical meditation on family and kinship in their largest sense. A Natalia Ginzburg-inspired wandering through the life of her grandmother in pre-war Italy and post-war Manchester stimulates an exploration of home, homesickness, home truths, and homecomings. Lenarduzzi has an impressively patient capacity for acts of sustained attention: the dandelion will never be the same again!’ — Lara Feigel, author of The Group‘Dandelions is…an overwhelming success. Just as it describes many Italys, it also encompasses many books, and this unusual combination of family memoir, literary enquiry and political history is a triumph.’ — Francesca Peacock, The Spectator‘As if scattering dandelion seeds, Lenarduzzi writes discursively in precise, metaphorical prose, layering family mythology with fascinating political, economic and social context…At a pivotal moment when “but Mussolini also did good things” is murmured across Italy, Lenarduzzi’s reckoning with her heritage highlights the way history reverberates in the present. Her timely investigation of Italian identity and fascist legacy illuminates the roots of nationalism the world over.’ — Madeleine Feeny, Financial Times‘Thea Lenarduzzi’s first book, is a more than worthy work of nonfiction. Mixing the wild and mythical stories told by Thea’s grandmother Dirce — about night-dwelling demons, bloody curses and “Mussolini's modern Icarus” — with the true tales of four generations of her own relatives, she fuses family memoir and social history in an examination of relationships, botany, architecture, and community ritual.’ — Jenna Mahale, I-D ‘Lenarduzzi’s touching debut, winner of the 2020 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, serves up lyrical meditations on food, family, and belonging...Lenarduzzi’s admiration for her grandmother’s resourcefulness and resilience provides an affecting emotional backbone, and the elegant prose delights... The result is a ruminative take on what it means to put down roots.’ — Publishers Weekly‘Lenarduzzi…finds potent symbols amid the phantasmagoria and subtly evokes their haunting power, which endows her work with a fabular quality redolent of Marina Warner… Lenarduzzi accommodates her family’s experiences without becoming obscure. Ultimately, the book’s greatest strength lies in her willingness to disturb histories previously thought to be settled.’ — Amy Walters, The Saturday Paper

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Book SynopsisA sensitive and thoughtful book which gives the opportunity to those who have experienced the loss of a baby to share their story. The hope is that it will help others who have also suffered the same unimaginable loss.

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Book SynopsisRaw, intense and absorbing.' Matt HaigAs tender and funny as it is painful.' TLSI didn't give my hands much thought before they turned against me. They have been chipping away at my life, slowly, slowly, in a way I could never have predicted.'Lauren Brown is anxious. And when she feels worried, she picks at her skin. Secretly, quietly, but increasingly compulsively, her skin-picking begins to affect her day-to-day life until she realizes she must unravel the reasons behind it.This sparkling memoir follows the thread of Lauren's anxiety tangled and frayed back to its source. Written with rare wit and insight, it is an attempt to redirect the anxiety that's pooled in her fingertips for as long as she can remember, released in odd bursts in caravan parks, on European holidays, at GP surgeries and on the wind-stung north-east coast. It is a moving and joyful exploration of obsession, forgiveness, stigma and healing, and a true love-song to the north.Thoughtful, unsparing and at times daTrade Review‘Lauren articulates her experience of mental health difficulties in raw, intense and absorbing style.’ Matt Haig ‘What a book Lauren Brown has written! A new voice is here. Hands is bright and vivid in the scenes it summons up, brave in its candour, moving in the story it tells, and very often very funny.’ Robert Macfarlane ‘There is a warmth and intimacy to Lauren Brown’s writing. …She explores with sensitivity a subject that some might find uncomfortable or embarrassing. … She writes about her compulsion with wit and humour, and the result is a book as tender and funny as it is painful.’ Times Literary Supplement ‘Light beautifully shed on a subject seldom talked about. This book is frank, raw and generous.’ Helen Mort, author of A Line Above the Sky: On Mountains and Motherhood ‘Accepting the existence of anxiety as something to live alongside, not hide from, Lauren Brown’s debut memoir is a moving and frank account of discovery and reflection. Written in humorous and conversational style, Hands marks Brown out as a startling new working-class writer’ Natasha Carthew, author and artistic director, Class Festival ‘Part detective story, part memoir, Hands is a voyage of discovery written with refreshing candour and clarity. Lauren took me with her every step of the way: I was left moved, enlightened and hopeful.’ Kathryn Mannix, author of Listen: How to Find the Words for Tender Conversations ‘A warm, humane memoir. Lauren Brown's debut is sympathetic, moving and hopeful.’ Kate Mascarenhas, author of The Psychology of Time Travel ‘ I absolutely loved Lauren’s voice … such intensity and bittersweet humour that I found myself laughing and crying within a matter of seconds.’ Maxine Chung, author of The Eighth Girl

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Book SynopsisA stunning guide to finding creative inspiration and how it can illuminate your life, your work, and your art.

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Book Synopsis''he sat down and wept, to think that even the rams knew more about the deeds of love than he did''Daphnis is fifteen years old, Chloe thirteen. They are drawn to each other and long to make love. But no one has told them what love is, nor do they know how to accomplish the physical act. Round their predicament Longus weaves a fantasy which entertains and instructs, but never errs in taste. The hard toil and precariousness of peasant life are here, but so are its compensations - revelry, music, dance, and storytelling. Above the action brood divine presences - Eros, Dionysus, Pan, the Nymphs - who collaborate to guide the adolescents into the mystery of Love, at once a sensual and a religious initiation.Daphnis and Chloe is the best known, and the best, of the early Greek romances, precursors to the modern novel. Admired by Goethe, it has been reinterpreted in music and art by Ravel and Chagall. This new translation is immensely readable, and does full justice to the humour and humanit

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Book SynopsisAn award-winning poet, teacher and “champion of poetry” (New York Times) demystifies the elusive element of voice.

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Book Synopsis**NOW INCLUDING THE FIRST CHAPTER OF DEMON COPPERHEAD**TWICE WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION FROM THE WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTIONTHE MULTI-MILLION COPY SELLING AUTHORWith the eyes of a scientist and the vision of a poet, Barbara Kingsolver explores her trademark themes of family, community and the natural world. Defiant, funny and courageously honest, High Tide in Tucson is an engaging and immensely readable collection from one of the most original voices in contemporary literature.''Possessed of an extravagantly gifted narrative voice, Kingsolver blends a fierce and abiding moral vision with benevolent and concise humour. Her medicine is meant for the head, the heart, and the soul.'' New York Times

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Book SynopsisLibrary of History is in three parts: mythical history to the Trojan War; history to Alexander’s death (323 BC); history to 54 BC. Books 1–5 and 11–20 survive complete, the rest in fragments.

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Book SynopsisGeorge Steiner, the eminent professor of English at Cambridge and Geneva universities, has outlined seven books he has never written, but has always wanted to write, in seven sections.In this fiercely original and audacious work, George Steiner tells of seven books which he did not write. Because intimacies and indiscretions were too threatening. Because the topic brought too much pain. Because its emotional or intellectual challenge proved beyond his capacities.The actual themes range widely and defy conventional taboos: the torment of the gifted when they live among, when they confront, the very great; the experience of sex in different languages; a love for animals greater than for human beings; the costly privilege of exile; a theology of emptiness.Yet a unifying perception underlies this diversity. The best we have or can produce is only the tip of the iceberg. Behind every good book, as in a lit shadow, lies the book which remained unwrittenTrade Reviewhas sections that stop the heart with their passion and eloquence -- Boyd Tonkin * INDEPENDENT *These essays reveal an inescapable humanity * GUARDIAN *bewitching; as personal as it is philosophical...thankfully, this is a touching, revealing, enlightening book that he did write * INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY *An important addition to his pubished works * BIG ISSUE IN THE NORTH *An unusual and thought-provoking book that deals with repressed feelings, hang-ups and confusion. * GOOD BOOK GUIDE *

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Book SynopsisOne of the founding texts of literary modernism.Trade Review"The cadenced prose beats in perfect time with the pulse of the slumbering city, where only the strange is awake. The atmosphere is old, dirty, often sordid, and yet, somehow, glorious.... The translation is almost perfect." -- John Randolph - Chicago Tribune"He possessed, as it were, a profound intuition of the obstinate, amorphous contingency which is life..." -- Jean-Paul Sartre

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Book SynopsisA timeless volume to be read and treasured, The Stone Reader provides an unparalleled overview of contemporary philosophy

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Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. They are the things we step on without noticing and the largest organisms on Earth. They are symbols of inexplicable growth and excruciating misery. They are grouped with plants, but they behave more like animals. In their inscrutability, mushrooms are wondrous organisms. The mushroom is an ordinary object whose encounters with humans are usually limited to a couple of species prepackaged at the grocery store. This book offers mushrooms as much more than a pasta ingredient or trendy coffee alternative. It presents these objects as the firmament for life as we know it, enablers of mystical traditions, menders of minds lost to depression. But it acknowledges, too, that this firmament only exists because of death and rot. Rummaging through philosophical, literary, medical , ecological , and anthropological texts only serves to confirm what the average forager already knows: thaTrade ReviewIn times when fungi mean high tech and big business, this book gracefully brings the human-mushroom relationship back to earth. An ode to our partners in eco-intimacy and mortality, it reminds us that foraging involves much more than learning how to ID--it also requires risking, dreaming, and opening to the future. Mushroom belongs on every forager's shelf, next to the field guides. * Margret Grebowicz, author of Rescue Me: On Dogs and Their Humans *Table of ContentsPre-amble Summer Part I. Mystery Fall Part II. Metaphor Winter Part III. Mycology Spring Part IV. Medicine Summer Part V. Magic Fall Post-Amble Index

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Book Synopsis‘Oliver Sacks is a perfect antidote to the anaesthetic of familiarity. His writing turns brains and minds transparent’ - ObserverWhen Oliver Sacks, a physician by profession, injured his leg while climbing a mountain, he found himself in an unusual position – that of patient. The injury itself was severe, but straightforward to fix; the psychological effects, however, were far less easy to predict, explain, or resolve: Sacks experienced paralysis and an inability to perceive his leg as his own, instead seeing it as some kind of alien and inanimate object, over which he had no control.A Leg to Stand On is both an account of Sacks’ ordeal and subsequent recovery, and an exploration of the ways in which mind and body are inextricably linked.Trade ReviewOliver Sacks is a neurologist, a man of humane eloquence, and a genuine communicator. The value of this book lies in its willingness to combine the technical and the demonic, to admit poetry and philosophy and the religious impulse. It is also intensely personal, and affirms the community of human experience. * Observer *In every way a marvellously rich and thoughtful tale. * Sunday Telegraph *A remarkable, generous, vivid and thoroughly intelligent piece of writing. * Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisThe incomparable Rebecca Solnit, author of more than a dozen acclaimed, prizewinning books of nonfiction including Men Explain Things To Me, brings the same dazzling writing to the essays in The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness; hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "globally wide-ranging and topically urgent and the Boston Globe as "luminous and precise.". As the title suggests, the territory of Solnit's concerns is vast, and in her signature alchemical style she combines commentary on history, justice, war and peace, and explorations of place, art, and community, all while writing with the lyricism of a poet to achieve incandescence and wisdom. Gathered here are celebrated iconic essays along with little-known pieces that create a powerful survey of the world we live in, from the jungles of the Zapatistas in Mexico to the splendors of the Arctic. This rich collection tours places as diverse as Haiti and Iceland; movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring; an original take on the question of who did Henry David Thoreau's laundry; and a searching look at what the hatred of country music really means. Solnit moves nimbly from Orwell to Elvis, to contemporary urban gardening to 1970s California macrame and punk rock, and on to searing questions about the environment, freedom, family, class, work, and friendship. It's no wonder she's been compared in Bookforum to Susan Sontag and Annie Dillard and in the San Francisco Chronicle to Joan Didion. The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness proves Rebecca Solnit worthy of the accolades and honors she's received. Rarely can a reader find such penetrating critiques of our time and its failures leavened with such generous heapings of hope. Solnit looks back to history and the progress of political movements to find an antidote to despair in what many feel as lost causes. In its encyclopedic reach and its generous compassion, Solnit's collection charts a way through the thickets of our complex social and political worlds. Her essays are a beacon for readers looking for alternative ideas in these imperiled times.Trade Review"What to call a journalist who writes about place while avoiding the subjects of luxury hotels, remote restaurants and urbane oddities? Not a travel writer, surely. And not an adventurer. One could do worse than answer with 'Rebecca Solnit'." --The New York Times Book Review "Solnit's signature blend of history, science, justice, and the personal illustrates each location just as she finds it, with a sense of specificity, sensitivity, and empathy." --Elle "Insights that are acute and meaningful... [It] leads to a different, more layered understanding of the world around us." --Utne Reader "Thoughtful, eloquent and often inspiring essays." --Kirkus Reviews "The 29 essays that make up Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness are global in their reach, combining meditations on history, politics, science, art, literature, climate change and natural disasters, and take us from the snowy tundra of the Arctic to the carnival-filled streets of New Orleans." --The Daily Beast "One mesmerizing volume...these lyrical essays stress the importance of collective action and community." --Publishers Weekly "Refreshingly coherent, profoundly smart." --BBC News "Globally wide-ranging and topically urgent ... will surely solidify her reputation as one of our most independent and necessary freelance intellectuals." --Los Angeles Review of Books "An amazing potpourri...she brings a clarity to the messiness of ideas." --Minnesota Public Radio "One of our most provocative, thoughtful essayists." --Austin American-Statesman "A sublime collection of essays... a remarkable read." --Brain Pickings "Beautifully written and fiercely argued...showcases the work of an impressive intellect and a brilliant writer." --Shelf Awareness "Whatever the subject, let's just get out of the way and let the gifted woman write." --Foreword Reviews "One of the most magnificent writers of our time." --The Guardian "Solnit's essays showcase the range and power not only of nonfiction, but of words themselves." --The Rumpus "Interesting, insightful and always surprising." --Houston Chronicle "Lives up to the promise of its ambitious title." --KQED, San Francisco "Solnit's finely wrought essays probe lofty issues in ways that make them feel intensely personal." --O: The Oprah Magazine "Luminous and precise, Solnit persuades, educates, and inspires." --The Boston Globe "It's sort of an encyclopedia and sort of isn't. It's really an anthology disguised as an encyclopedia. But no matter what label you attach to it, the important thing to remember about this book is that it was written by Rebecca Solnit, one of the best nonfiction writers working today." --Chicago Tribune

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Book SynopsisRudolf Zwirner, “the man who invented the art market,” as coined in Der Spiegel, reflects on more than sixty years in the art business in his authoritative autobiography. An art dealer of the ages, Rudolf Zwirner, father of the esteemed gallerist David Zwirner, reached many milestones in his career. From co-founding Art Cologne, the first fair for contemporary art, in 1967, to showing works by Georg Baselitz, Gerhard Richter, and Andy Warhol, Zwirner transformed the contemporary art scene in Cologne. Born in 1933, he presented more than three hundred exhibitions from the early 1960s to 1991. In his autobiography, Zwirner reveals stories of artists, his gallery, and his most important collector, Peter Ludwig, whose collection forms the cornerstone of the Ludwig Museum in Cologne. First published in 2019 in German, and translated and adapted here for the first time in English, the book explores the most significant moments of Zwirner’s career and the fast-changing postwar art world of. Also included in this edition is a new introduction by Lucas Zwirner, Rudolf’s grandson, who reflects on his grandfather’s role in bringing us to the global art landscape we find ourselves in now.Table of ContentsIntroduction; Childhood under the Swastika; Youth During the Postwar Years; Art Beckons; Berlin and Paris; Secretary General of the Second Documenta; A Rookie Gallerist in Essen; A Fresh Start as an Art Dealer in Cologne; Stations of a Gallery; The Birth of the First Contemporary Art Fair; The Kahnweiler of Pop Art; Peter Ludwig; The New York Connection, Richter, Polke, Baselitz, and Co.; From Art Dealer to Curator and Back; Finally Home in Berlin

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Book Synopsis"what should i tell you? that feral will not enrich you. that feral will not be mastered. feral is ‘wild’ without utility. it offers nothing, and it asks for nothing in return."In this uncompromising collection of lyric essays, T.S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet Fran Lock pulls us with her into the vortex of the ‘feral’. From medieval bestiaries to Poundland, Edmund Spenser to X-Ray Spex, in Vulgar Errors / Feral Subjects Lock explores and eviscerates historical and cultural links between animality and otherness in contexts ranging across class, gender, queerness and Irishness. Overflowing with ‘strange rigour’ and a rage that is ‘tempering hope’ Lock excavates the ways feral is at once both trap and means of liberation.‘Fran Lock is our savvy sc/avenging angel, undoing the curse of racial capitalism’s stranglehold on language and meaning. Mattering out of place, Vulgar Errors / Feral Subjects is endlessly errant, reminding us that writing is “a verb, not a noun,” immersive, propulsive and absolutely extra. Every line is so alive, so completely itself, it leaps from the page to flare bright & huge as graffiti on every wall until they fall.’ — So Mayer

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Book Synopsis'What we ought to do, as writers, is seize freedom now, immediately, by recognizing that we already have it.'Cynthia Ozick, one of 'the greatest living American writers', has, over a lifetime of observation, produced some of the sharpest and most influential works of criticism in contemporary Anglo-American writing. Described as the 'Emily Dickinson of the Bronx' and 'one of the most accomplished and graceful literary stylists of her time', her acclaimed works span topics from Henry James to Helen Keller, and from Christian Heroism to lovesickness. The essays selected here come from the six volumes Ozick published in the USA over the last thirty-three years. Collected by David Miller, Ozick's friend and agent, they represent the diversity, curiosity, originality, and crackling wit of her works. A volume to treasure, to re-read and to relish, this is Cynthia Ozick, 'the Athena of America's literary pantheon', at her very best.Trade ReviewIt's not unlike falling in love, reading the essays of Cynthia Ozick. Here is a mind as gentle and fierce all at once... A mind that embodies literature's finest potential. * Los Angeles Times *Even when you disagree with her, she electrifies your mind. * New York Times *Splendid... Ozick relies on sensibility and intelligence to make their own way in the world... lyric grace under intellectual pressure gives her news its staying power. Her essays invite our admiration even as they challenge us to talk back. -- David LehmanAs an essayist, Cynthia Ozick is a very good storyteller. Her arguments are plots... they twist and turn, digress, slow down and speed up, surprise with sudden illuminations.... She likes to spin and sparkle... * The New York Times Book Review *She is a writer innately drawn to paradox, and to the moral questions inherent in the relationships between richness and poverty, mind and body, history and imagination... In everything Ozick writes, she regards the land of the free with the head-shaking disbelief of someone who knows. -- Ali Smith * Guardian *No American writer working today is more distinctive in everything she does on the page. * PEN/Malamud Award *Ozick is razor sharp as she dissects art, religion and the distinction between literary and popular fiction * Observer *

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Book SynopsisA window into a life of insatiable desire and uninhibited sex - this is Parisian art critic Catherine M.'s account of her sexual awakening and her unrestrained pursuit of pleasure. From the glamorous singles clubs of Paris to the Bois de Boulogne, she describes her erotic experiences in precise and beautiful detail. A phenomenal bestseller throughout Europe, The Sexual Life of Catherine M., like Fifty Shades of Grey, breaks with accepted ideas of sex and examines many alternative manifestations of desire. Told in spare, elegant prose, her story will shock, enlighten and liberate you.Trade ReviewElegantly written and extraordinarily frank. Here is a book so rich in sexual revelation that it could feed five tabloids for a year and still have something left for Channel 5 * Independent on Sunday *Millet is the new icon of highbrow pornography * Guardian *The author writes like a connoisseur who is perfectly at ease with her subject... A brilliant testimony of a life spent at the sexual front line -- James Harkin * Independent on Sunday *This is the most explicit book about sex ever written by a woman, though it is far from pornographic. Catherine Millet sets about coolly and rationally exploring her insatiable appetites - and she has lived to tell the tale that is the opposite of lurid. It is a comprehensive and elegant performance -- Edmund WhiteI don't approve of The Sexual Life of Catherine M. But I am grateful she has written it -- Lynne Truss * The Times *She proves again that Catholicism and filthy sex go together like salt beef and rye * Independent on Sunday *Readers may find this book disturbing or repellent, but they are unlikely to find it dull. I thought that it was the most honest book I had ever read on the subject of sex -- Rowan Pelling * Daily Telegraph *Her fans are now citing her as a feminist sexual crusader * Observer *Millet's achievement is that she curates or, more accurately, catalogues her sexual adventures with no sense of shame or remorse -- Deborah Levy * Independent *Is this the most original novel of the year? -- JG Ballard * Guardian *You are amazed at her honesty as you are by her exploits. Some of what she does and says mirror your own thoughts and fantasies -- Marcelle D’Argy Smith * Daily Express *It is Millet's subversive achievement to describe pleasure for its own sake * New Statesman *This bestseller shocked Europe and looks set to become controversial here * Daily Mirror *Her descriptions are laced with a laconic frankness which veers between intelligent reflection and willed self-objectification -- Michael Fishwick * Economist *Millet diverts the tradition of erotic writing by French women such as Pauline Reage and Alina Reyes firmly into the realm of non-fiction, with this account of her sexual encounters, tastes and unconventional morality... Millet writes extremely well, describing her recollections vividly, and investing her physical largesse with a queenly magnanimity... Millet's sexual aesthetic is a literary one, invoking Sade, Reage and Proust... a work of libertine philosophy' -- Lisa Hilton * Times Literary Supplement *Millet's implicit mission is to write about her own desire with absolute candour and a fierce refusal to consider her audience's needs or sensibilities -- Kathryn Hughes * Literary Review *Explicit and honest * Dazed & Confused *Pornography must have been a challenge, but Catherine M has risen to it in a way that will have Descartes encoring from Beyond... Catherine M writes with the enthusiasm of one who invented multiple-partner sex even though she no longer practises the intercourse that she writes about... Genuine free-love requires a level of trust and honesty few of us are prepared to bring into our dealings with others. Catherine M. might be said to be a genuine innocent -- Ron Butlin * Sunday Herald *The unabashed erotica of The Sexual Life of Catherine M... salutes the Marquis de Sade in a straight-talking romp through dozens of one-night stands catalogued with savage wit by a Parisian intellecual -- Katrina Dixon * Scotsman *She has recorded her numerous sexual encounters in disarming detail and an alluring style of cool detachment... They make for extraordinarily compulsive reading. Some may think her honesty gratuitous, others will identify with it and find it inspiring * Good Book Guide *The investigation of one's woman sexuality is still, by its nature, unique -- Nick Hasted * Uncut *For those unfamiliar with the female body, it's also illuminating! -- Simon Lovat * Gay Times *An aloof, gracefully crystilline style as elegant as any French pornography since Sade * Vogue USA *Graceful, thoughful, oddly charming, and profoundly pornographic. A bold, intelligent, pioneering tour de force * Kirkus Reviews *The porn most likely to be read by those who wouldn't be seen dead clutching a sweaty copy of Fiesta is The Sexual Life of Catherine M. ... Fine observations and precise prose style... She fits neatly into a category of literary outrage -- Big Issue * Tina Jackson *An ideal languorous holiday read * Diva *Do not read this unless you have a wildly satisfying sex life * Sleazenation *Highly literary, and beautifully, reverently, precisely descriptive -- Morgan Falconer * Ham & High *Millet's unashamed approach to sex is certainly refreshing and admirable -- Anna Carey * Sunday Tribune *By reclaiming sexual morality as a highly personal matter outside any kind of political control Millet lets sex take revenge on politics -- Jane Cornwell * Weekend Australian *

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Book SynopsisWhat happens when cataracts rob an art critic of his sight? John Berger, whose classic book Ways of Seeing has been in print for fifty years, joins forces with Turkish illustrator Selcuk Demirel to reflect on his own experience of loss of vision. 'John Berger writes about what is important, not just interesting. In contemporary English letters he seems to me peerless; not since Lawrence has there been a writer who offers such attentiveness to the sensual world.' Susan Sontag.Trade Review"First published in 2011, when Berger was 84, this book is a kind of late-life accompaniment to Berger’s Ways of Seeing, which remains for many the definitive guide to how to look at a work of art. In Cataract, Berger puts words to the simplest of human actions in a manner so, well, eye-opening that you’ll never, uh, see seeing the same way again." —Dan Kois, Slate

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Book SynopsisOsip Mandelstam visited Armenia in 1930, and during the eight months of his stay he rediscovered his poetic voice and was inspired to write an experimental meditation on the country and its ancient culture. 'Armenia brought him back to his true self, a self depending on the "inner ear" which could never play a poet false. There was everything congenial to him in this country of red and ochre landscape, ancient churches, and resonant pottery.' (Henry Gifford). Conversation about Dante, Mandelstam's incomparable apologia for poetic freedom and challenge to the Bolshevik establishment, was dictated by the poet to his wife, Nadezhda Mandelstam, in 1934-35, during the last phase of his itinerant life. It has close ties to the Journey.Trade Review“At once a travel narrative, an allegorical journey, a withering comment on State-Building, a humanist philosophy of life, a preparation for death and a prophecy of resurrection...Journey was the last piece Mandelstam saw published, and it takes its place among the outstanding masterpieces of twentieth-century literature.” —Bruce Chatwin

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Book Synopsis"An entrancing companion for wine lovers. Celebratory, discerning writing with all the variety and unexpectedness of the wines explored." — Michèle Roberts, author and Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia "This book is about feeling, tasting and describing the beauty of wine, as well as understanding the intensity of emotion that wine can engender." — Decanter Magazine "So precise and dancing, so chiselled and so free, as complex and delicious as your favourite bottle of wine, you will enjoy the world of wine differently after reading through Jefford’s words." — Pascaline Lepeltier on Instagram “A new sort of literary gumption arrived on the scene with Andrew Jefford; a powerful blend of science and poetry. Here is a writer who does his interviews, delves deep into motives and methods, and then lets fly with whatever imagery he finds winging by.” Hugh Johnson (2019) Poet, philosopher, author, radio presenter and journalist, Andrew Jefford lives in France; but buried deep in one wine country what does he miss most about the rest? The answer: “Drinking young port. It’s the wine drinker’s equivalent of zorbing, wing-walking, base-jumping … you won’t fully understand it unless you have tasted it young, in its ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ stage, when it comes hurtling out of the glass and puts the screamers on you...” Andrew is the ideal companion for anyone wine-curious. In this collection of his essays, opinions and articles he shares his fascinating observations from half a century of discovery. For Andrew, wine should be listened to and admired, wherever it comes from; old-school pretentions turned on their head; style-points disdained; stellar prices dismissed; questions asked...Trade Review"An entrancing companion for wine lovers. Celebratory, discerning writing with all the variety and unexpectedness of the wines explored." - Michèle Roberts, Author and Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia"This book is about feeling, tasting and describing the beauty of wine, as well as understanding the intensity of emotion that wine can engender." - Decanter Magazine"…indispensible book in which the formidable strengths of this writer are on full display." - Terry Theise"So precise and dancing, so chiseled and so free, as complex and delicious as your favorite bottle of wine, you will enjoy the world of wine differently after reading through Jefford’s words." - Pascaline Lepeltier, Instagram"Reading through Drinking with the Valkyries — the title refers to the experience of drinking young vintage port — it struck me that Jefford is a throwback to a less specialised age." - The Critic"But while Jefford’s lyrical, almost literary language is his calling card, I’ve long found the most impressive element of his writing to be the rigour." - Club O Enologique"Jefford’s essays are like that glass of wine at day’s end — restorative, uplifting and enlightening. You may want to read another before putting down the bottle — I mean, the book." - Washington Post"…the standout read has to be the recently published Drinking With The Valkyries, the writings, thoughts, and wine philosophy of Andrew Jefford." - The Irish Sun"I open Jefford’s books to skim through and find myself drawn in." - The Telegraph"He writes so beautifully." - Kylie Minogue, The Guardian"If there was a single wine book that Tam would beg wine lovers to buy in 2022, it would be this one." - Tamlyn Currin"Andrew Jefford is the wine writer’s wine writer. To read his words is to be drawn far away from the everyday world of professional wine-tasting." - Falstaff"His prose is poised and purposeful, each word carefully considered yet never weighed down by pointed effort. He is a rarity in the world of wine: a writer whose (main) topic happens to be wine." - Fine+Rare"Jefford consistently unearths and illuminates ways of looking at wine that continually deepen my appreciation and passion for the subject. I can assure you, if you love wine, this book will do the same for you." - vinography"… devoted to the pleasure of wine, the experiences and all the reasons you are interested in the subject." - Yorkshire Post"This current volume is a collection of essays culled from the period 2007 to 2022 and it is safe to say that Jefford hasn't lost his touch." - Sommelier India"Jefford consistently unearths and illuminates ways of looking at wine that continually deepen my appreciation and passion for the subject. I can assure you, if you love wine, this book will do the same for you." - vinography"… devoted to the pleasure of wine, the experiences and all the reasons you are interested in the subject." - Yorkshire Post"In a candid and wide-ranging interview to mark the publication of his superb new book Drinking with the Valkyries, WFW contributing editor Andrew Jefford looks back over his distinguished career, opening up about the art and craft of (wine) writing, his abiding love of wine, and his hopes and fears for its future." - The World of Fine Wine"This is, instead, all about eloquent, open-minded, and generously inclusive wine appreciation: We’re all invited, and reminded how much there is to enjoy." - Wine Conversation"One of the great pleasures of Andrew's writing, and of this volume, is the great variety of pace, dynamics, tempo, and tone between his pieces." - The World of Fine WineTable of ContentsForeword, Preface, Chapter One: Origins, Chapter Two: Some Soils, Some Skies, Chapter Three: Taste and Tasting, Chapter Four: Some Beautiful Wines, Chapter Five: A Tea Break, Chapter Six: Interrogations and Impieties, Chapter Seven: Wine Shadows, Chapter Eight: Wine in a Life, Chapter Nine: Against Wine Worldliness, Chapter Ten: Three Last Wines, Glossary, Chronology, Index

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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. Politics vs. Literature, the fourth in the Orwell’s Essays series, is, at heart, a review of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Having been given a copy of the book on his eighth birthday, Orwell knows it inside out, and thinks highly of it; it is ‘pessimistic’, though, he says – ‘it descends into political partisanship of a narrow kind,’ designed to ‘humiliate man by reminding him that he is weak and ridiculous.’ Using the book as an example of enjoying a book whose author one cannot stand, Orwell goes on to say that he considers Gulliver’s Travels a work of art, leaving the reader to reconsider the books on their own shelves.Trade Review'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' Irish TimesTable of ContentsPolitics vs. Literature, Note on the Text, Notes, A Brief Biographical Sketch of George Orwell

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Book SynopsisIn 1940 the Second World War continued to rage, and atrocities wreaked around the globe made international waves. Wells, a socialist and prominent political thinker as well as a first-rate novelist, set down in The Rights of Man a stirring manifesto, designed to instruct the international community on how best to safeguard human rights. The work gained traction, and was soon under discussion for becoming actual legislation. Although Wells didn't live to see it enacted, his words laid the groundwork for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which enshrined human rights in law for the first time, and was adopted by the United Nations in 1948, changing the course of history for ever and granting fundamental rights to billions.Trade Review'A born story-teller.' (J.B. Priestly) 'A great artist. (Vladimir Nabokov)Table of ContentsIntroduction: 'He Told Us So' by Burhan Sonmez, Preface, The Rights of Man, or, What Are We Fighting For? (i. Imperative Need for a Declaration, ii. Security from Violence, iii. Habeas Corpus, iv. Democratic Law, v. The New Tyranny of the Dossier, vi. The Right to Subsistence, vii. The Right to Work and to Have Possessions, viii. Free Market and Profit-Seeking, ix. The Revised Declaration, x. A French Parallel, xi. An Alternative Draft and Some Further Suggestions, xii. The New Map of the World, xiii. A Book for Which the World Is Waiting), Note on the Text, Notes

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Book SynopsisEncounterism is a joyous immersion into the everyday pleasure and shared humanity we stand to lose in an increasingly digital world. Andy Field explores both different kinds of and different venues for human encounters, from the hairdressers to the cinema, from nightclubs to eateries, shops staffed by people and free-form urban parks; these are the everyday yet invaluable spaces that allow for human encounters that enrich our lives. Field writes with tenderness and wit - born out of twenty years as a performance artist creating scenarios in which people are encouraged to see and interact with each other afresh. In Encounterism he not only examines how we physically encounter both strangers and friends - in all our human grace and awkwardness - but builds to a manifesto for the importance of real-world interaction. A rousing reminder that our cities, our residential and work places, must still allow for the possibility of spontaneity and shared, in-person joy.

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