Essays Books

Book SynopsisThe ancient civilization of Mesopotamia thrived between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates over 4,000 years ago. The myths collected here, originally written in cuneiform on clay tablets, include parallels with the biblical stories of the Creation and the Flood, and the famous Epic of Gilgamesh, the tale of a man of great strength, whose heroic quest for immortality is dashed through one moment of weakness. Recent developments in Akkadian grammar and lexicography mean that this new translation, complete with notes, a glossary of deities, place-names, and key terms, and illustrations of the mythical monsters featured in the text, will replace all other versions.Trade Review`has the great merit of including not only the obvious Gilgamesh and Creation texts but also the Atrahasis, Adapa, Etana, Anzu, and Erra stories and even the slight but highly suggestive "Theogony of Dunnu"' Greece & Rome'handsomely produced book' A.R. George, SOAS BUlletin'her enterprise is to be warmly welcomed' John Dillon, Trinity College, Dublin, HermatheraTable of ContentsAtrahasis; The Epic of Gilgamesh; The Descent of Ishtar to the Underworld; Nergal and Ereshkigal; Adapa; Etana; Anzu; The Epic of Creation; Theology of Dunnu; Erra and Ishum

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Book SynopsisVintage Feminism: classic feminist texts in short formWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JEANETTE WINTERSON‘What conditions are necessary for the creation of works of art?’ Security, confidence, independence, a degree of prosperity – a room of one’s own. All things denied to most women around the world living in Virginia Woolf’s time, and before her time, and since. In this funny, provoking and insightful polemic, Virginia Woolf challenges her audience of young women to work on even in obscurity, to cultivate the habit of freedom, and to exercise the courage to write exactly what we think.ALSO IN THE VINTAGE FEMINIST SHORT SERIES:The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary WollstonecraftThe Beauty Myth by Naomi WolfMy Own Story by Emmeline PankhurstTrade ReviewOne realises afresh the full meaning of originality, the magic of the mind which plays around concrete facts as though they were all spirit. And when it is finished it is with a renewed sense of zest and stimulus that one takes up life again and looks anew at objects which before were only ordinary. * Guardian *Brilliant interweaving of personal experience, imaginative musing and political clarity -- Kate MosseAchingly relevant -- Natasha Walter * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisYoko Tawada's first book of essays in English, both a brilliant exploration of language and its relationship to power, colonialism and history and an introduction to an electrifying new side of the National Book Award Winner

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Book SynopsisA selected group of NZ writers have chosen a favourite New Zealander to write an essay on. These pieces are personal, illuminating and often moving. Around 5,000 words per essay, the writers had full choice on who to write about and what approach to take, so there is great variety in the styles. Writers are; Lloyd Jones on Paul Melser (potter), Paula Morris on Matiu Rata (politician), Catherine Robertson on Dame Margaret Sparrow (doctor and health advocate), Greg McGee on Ken Gray (all black), Stephanie Johnson on Carole Beu (bookseller), Malcolm Mulholland on Ranginui Walker(academic) Selina Tusitala Marsh on Albert Wendt (writer), Elspeth Sandys on Rewi Alley (writer and activist), and Paul Thomas on John Wright (cricketer).

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Book Synopsis''We're mysterious aliens in the crowd. We jump like fleas from future to past and back again, and float like clouds of gas between nebulae; in a flash, we can reach the edge of the universe, or tunnel into a quark, or swim within a star-core... We're as unassuming as fireflies, yet our numbers grow like grass in spring. We sci-fi fans are people from the future.'' Cixin Liu, from the essay ''Sci-Fi Fans''A View from the Stars features a range of short works from the past three decades of New York Times bestselling author Cixin Liu''s prolific career, putting his nonfiction essays and short stories side-by-side for the first time. This collection includes essays and interviews that shed light on Liu''s experiences as a reader, writer, and lover of science fiction throughout his life, as well as short fiction that gives glimpses into the evolution of his imaginative voice over the years.

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Book SynopsisA BBC Radio 4 Book of the WeekMagnificent' GuardianRemarkable A compact classic!' Bill McKibbenI learned something new and found something amazing on every page' Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot SeeFens, bogs, swamps and marine estuaries are the earth's most desirable and dependable resources. Here, Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx brings her witness and research to the vitally important role they play in preserving the environment, and their systemic destruction in the pursuit of profit. Travelling from the fens of sixteenth-century England to America's Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Fen, Bog and Swamp is both a revelatory history and an urgent plea for wetland reclamation, from one of our greatest prose stylists.A rousing call to action' EsquireSparklingly furious it has a profoundly positive message' Richard Mabey, TelegraphThis haunting tribute is a pleasure to read' Financial TimesTrade Review‘Proulx wants us to see the loss of wetlands – and to appreciate the beauty in these swampy and often stinking places. Boy, does she succeed. The prose is just magnificent, bringing to life hitherto overlooked habitats’ Guardian ‘Proulx’s book is truly peat-ish: layered, learned, feisty, wildly discursive, and most certainly “undulating, dreaming [and] philosophising”’ Richard Mabey, Telegraph ‘A haunting tribute to the world’s peatlands … Proulx’s poetic description of these places, and peat itself, is a pleasure to read’ Financial Times ‘This sobering history of our world’s rich wetlands explains the chilling ecological consequences of their destruction’ New York Times Book Review ‘An enchanting work of nature writing’ Esquire ‘Delves into the history of peatland destruction and its role in the climate crisis … Proulx uses nimble prose to knit together scientific facts, personal experiences, and literary references while deciphering the nomenclature of these three subtly diverse wetlands which collectively hold the key to human history’ Vogue ‘A fierce declaration of peat’s importance to climate stability and human survival ’ New York Review of Books ‘[Proulx’s] astute and impassioned examinations of all kinds of wetlands … show a new side of the novelist we thought we knew’ Los Angeles Times ‘So often feared, dredged and drained, swamps, bogs and fens (it turns out) are just as vital to our species’ survival on this planet as healthy forests and oceans – perhaps more so. Proulx has written a moving elegy and cri de coeur for our world’s wetlands’ Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See ‘Annie Proulx is, as ever, remarkable – her mind, her heart and her learning take us on an unforgettable and unflinching tour of past and present’ Bill McKibben

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Book SynopsisLaughter shakes us out of our deadness. An outburst of spontaneous laughter is an eruption from the unconscious that, like political resistance, poetry, or self-revelation, expresses a provocative, impish drive to burst free from external constraints. Taking laughter’s revelatory capacity as a starting point, and rooted in Nuar Alsadir’s experience as a poet and psychoanalyst, Animal Joy seeks to recover the sensation of feeling alive and embodied. Writing in a poetic, associative style, blending the personal with the theoretical, Alsadir ranges from her experience in clown school, Anna Karenina’s morphine addiction, Freud’s unfreudian behaviors, marriage brokers and war brokers to ‘Not Jokes’, Abu Ghraib, Fanon’s negrophobia, smut, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, laugh tracks, the problem with adjectives, to how poetry can wake us up. At the centre of the book, though, is the author’s relationship with her daughters, who erupt into the text like sudden, unexpected laughter. These interventions – frank, tender, and always a challenge to the writer and her thinking – are like tiny revolutions, pointedly showing the dangers of being severed from our True Self and hinting at ways we might be called back to it. A bold and insatiably curious prose debut, Animal Joy is an ode to spontaneity and feeling alive.Trade Review‘To read Animal Joy is to become alive to the condition of wakefulness in the world. This spectacular achievement by the psychoanalyst and writer Nuar Alsadir provokes and destabilizes our understanding of a life’s competing narratives. I can think of no other contemporary work of nonfiction that brings together autobiography, a learned history of psychoanalysis, lyrical poetics, ontological investigations of our attempt to manage our own feelings, with such astute engagement. This is a work that will change conversations about who we are, what we think motivates us, what makes us us. The meeting place of the intentional and the unintentional erupts in Animal Joy in order that we might reinvestigate our incoming thoughts and feelings with a sense of vigor and curiosity. If you are open to introducing “tiny revolutions” of thought into your life by resisting received and uninterrogated scripts, read this book.’ — Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen‘Reading this book you are on a joy ride with the mind of a free thinker who will surprise you, make you laugh uncontrollably, and trouble you until you come out changed.’ — Orna Guralnik, Psychologist, Psychoanalyst, Couples Therapy (BBC)‘Few things feel as important right now as what Nuar Alsadir is thinking about in her brilliant new book. She considers the ways in which, despite our most determined curation of our public-faces, and despite our approval-seeking and plain old quotidian bullshittery, laughter reveals to us (and sometimes others) what we might really feel.’ — Ross Gay, author of The Book of Delights‘Nuar Alsadir has wandered fearlessly through the wordless regions of everyday life and returned intact, bearing this exhilaratingly personal and artful weave of stories and meditations. As precise as it is lyrical, Animal Joy invites us to attend anew to human feelings, those elusive, barely noticed entities transmitting everywhere, all the time, “with a frequency outside of measurement.”’ — Josh Cohen, author of Not Working‘Nuar Alsadir’s lyrical, hilarious and beautifully undefended meditation has the capacity to widen our consciousness to allow notice of what occurs in the interstices of attention and mortification. In that way, Animal Joy is a book that seems compassionately able to read us as we turn its pages.’ — Jonathan Lethem‘A genuine masterpiece. Nuar Alsadir’s Animal Joy might be the best thing I’ve ever read on psychoanalysis and its deep connection to living a full, real, embodied life. Utterly compelling, radical, dizzyingly original, and beautiful, this is the work of a writer at the height of their powers.’ — Rebecca Tamás, author of Strangers‘Gorgeously written and by turns hilarious and crushing, Alsadir’s examination of humanity’s “savage complexity” is not to be missed.’ — Publishers Weekly ‘It will leave you feeling enlightened and emboldened, and will even make you laugh.’ — Observer‘Nuar Alsadir’s Animal Joy is extravagant with revelations. Alsadir reads the human psyche with brilliant rigor and generosity, patiently prodding underneath the surface of human behavior, language, politics and race to get at the root of the real. After I finished Animal Joy, I came away feeling more awake, more present, and more connected to myself and the world.’ — Cathy Park Hong, author of Minor Feelings‘Through the awesome and heterogeneous study of this book, laughter at first feels like the most enigmatic act, a convulsing creature in the psyche, in the home, in awkward publics, but then it is returned to us as the most true form of comprehension; an animal attitude to reality, a culturing note of corpsing, creasing and cracking up, that snags on the meaning of everything.’ — Holly Pester, author of Comic Timing‘Where do laughter, psychoanalysis, poetry, motherhood, creativity, thought, language, and so much more intersect? In Animal Joy Nuar Alsadir shows us in dazzling fashion, demonstrating what only the essay form, in the hands of a true artist, critic, and thinker, can achieve.’ — John Keene, author of Counternarratives‘Alsadir’s Granta essay on the emotional flagellation of clowning is one of the best pieces of writing I have ever read, and her longer interrogation into the act—and release—of laughing is equally powerful and moving.’ — Courtney Maum, Literary Hub ‘Expansive and erudite. . . . Watching the motion of [Alsadir’s] mind across her capacious subject matter is captivating.’ — Kathleen Rooney, Liber

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Book SynopsisA beautiful, expansive essay about care, dependence, and what it means to breathe in an age of environmental catastrophe

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsAn Introduction by Jessica Gildersleeve vii About Jessica Gildersleeve xxiii About Tom Butler-Bowdon xxv A Room of One’s Own xxvii

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Book SynopsisClassic guide to acquiring and maintaining political power is refreshing in its directness, yet often disturbing in its cold practicality. Starkly relevant to the political upheavals of the 20th century, this calculating prescription for power remains today, nearly 500 years after it was written, a timely and startling lesson in the practice of autocratic rule.

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Book SynopsisTen essays on how reading and meaningfully engaging with literature can help us live better, more purposeful lives.How do we live fully?How do we live successfully?Adrift in an anchorless world, we often worry about where we are heading. What meaning can we hope to find in our modern, secular life? The answer, Ben Hutchinson explains, can be found by looking to writers and thinkers to help us live more purposefully, more mindfully more fully.Interweaving his own (mis-)adventures with those of authors such as T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust and Joan Didion, On Purpose proposes ten ways in which reading and writing encourage us to ask difficult questions, project our minds into the past and future, and see ourselves and others differently.Engaging, uplifting and aphoristic, this book is for anyone who has lost their sense of direction or wishes to radically transform the way they live.

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Book SynopsisThe articles collected in George Orwell''s Essays illuminate the life and work of one of the most individual writers of this century - a man who elevated political writing to an art. This outstanding collection brings together Orwell''s longer, major essays and a fine selection of shorter pieces that includes ''My Country Right or Left'', ''Decline of the English Murder'', ''Shooting an Elephant'' and ''A Hanging''. With great originality and wit Orwell unfolds his views on subjects ranging from a revaluation of Charles Dickens to the nature of Socialism, from a comic yet profound discussion of naughty seaside postcards to a spirited defence of English cooking. Displaying an almost unrivalled mastery of English plain prose, Orwell''s essays created a unique literary manner from the process of thinking aloud and continue to challenge, move and entertain.This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Bernard Crick.

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Book SynopsisJoin science journalist Sabrina Imbler on an astonishing journey which will completely redefine the way you think about nature and the ocean''An astonishing debut'' GUARDIAN''Reveals just as much about our fascinating, mysterious world as it does about our fascinating, mysterious selves'' NEW YORK TIMESIn My Life in Sea Creatures we encounter: the mother octopus, starving herself while watching over her eggs; the yeti crab, thriving in crushing pressure and oppressive darkness; the cuttlefish, able to change its appearance in a fraction of a second; and many other creatures lurking in the depths of the ocean.Imbler''s work weaves the wonders of marine biology with their own identity as a queer, non-binary mixed-race writer. They implicitly connect endangered sea life to marginalised human communities and shatter our preconceptions about the sea and what it means to survive.''A miraculous, transcendental book'' ED YON

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay Named a Best Book of 2018 by TIME, Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Wired, Esquire, Buzzfeed, Paste, Bitch, Bustle, The Chicago Review of Books and iBooks As a novelist, Alexander Chee has been described as ‘masterful’ by Roxane Gay, ‘incendiary’ by the New York Times, and ‘brilliant’ by the Washington Post. With How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, his first collection of nonfiction, he secures his place as one of the finest essayists of his generation. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author’s exploration of the entangling of life, literature and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these interconnected essays he constructs a self, growing from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckoning with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and America’s history, including his father’s death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing – Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley – the writing of his first novel, Edinburgh, and the election of Donald Trump. By turns commanding, heartbreaking and wry, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel asks questions about how we create ourselves in life and in art, and how to fight when our dearest truths are under attack.Trade ReviewAlexander Chee sifted through tales from his past to present golden insights into the way art can shape a life ... a singular and sincere writer of both fiction and nonfiction * TIME 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2018 *Alexander Chee is one of the best living writers of today. If he’s not already a household name, he needs to be ... Powerful, powerful essays with powerful, powerful words * Buzzfeed's Isaac Fitzgerald, on NBC’s Today *Chee’s insights about writing, love and activism are hard-won, honest and incredibly wise * Curtis Sittenfeld, Guardian Summer Reads *Urgent and insightful * Viet Thanh Nguyen, Guardian Summer Reads *Pulses with urgency ... Chee has written a moving and personal tribute to impermanence, a wise and transgressive meditation on a life lived both because of and in spite of America, a place where, he writes, “you are allowed to speak the truth as long as nothing changes” * New York Times Book Review *These essays feel like a life’s wisdom – its hurts, joys and redemptions – salvaged from a great fire ... This book makes me feel possible * Ocean Vuong *Two-thirds of the way through Alexander Chee's How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, I abandoned my sharpened reviewer’s pencil in favour of luxuriating in the words. Chee’s writing has a mesmerizing quality; his sentences are rife with profound truths ... Chee is a very special artist; his writing is lyrical and accessible, whimsical and sad, often all at the same time * NPR *Heartfelt, writerly essays ... powerful -- Alex Preston * Spectator *As profound as they are beautiful, Chee's essays impart wisdom from a life fully lived, and speak to what it means to be a writer and reader in contemporary times * Buzzfeed *It’s so good that I could fill my word count just with quotations ... Every essay, no matter the subject, exhibits warmth, rigour, tact ... The mask conceals and it reveals; writing transfigures and it uncovers. That’s the gift that writing has given Chee, and it’s the gift that his wonderful new collection gives its readers * Boston Globe *A knowing and luminous self-portrait * O, the Oprah Magazine *There is indeed an art to the personal essay, and he is a master artist * Esquire *Unique and powerful, insistently itself * R.O. Kwon, Electric Literature *[A] trailblazing collection * Washington Post *Profound and resonant ... A nimble study in radical self-invention ... The revelations that follow crackle with the same glowing, essential truths * Wired *Rarely does a book of essays come along so affecting, so brave and bluntly honest, and so raw and poetic. I quit underlining my favourite aphoristic lines by the time I reached that third essay: it was useless to try to pick individual diamonds from a whole pile of them * Interview Magazine *I'm astonished by the wisdom of these essays, and how beautiful they are. A riveting account of activism and artistry, as well as a profound exploration of the intersections of identities and experiences that build up this novelist's composite eye. Alexander Chee is brilliant and brave in equal measure, and has written an essential book about how to survive as an artist in America today * Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You *How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is a rare hybrid of a book: an act of poetry, a gift of entertainment, and a primer for life. Alexander Chee is one of our most important writers and we should listen to every damn thing he has to say * Jami Attenberg, author of All Grown Up *Alexander Chee asks one of the great coming of age questions here: Isn’t beauty strong? His welter of answers yields a really moving (and sometimes devastating) writing memoir of being young, of being someone and not entirely knowing it yet – all the while being so poetically receptive to the fragrant and devastating strains of beauty and beauty’s harsh wisdom that wind up moving and shaping a life. It's a strangely romantic and practical book. It holds a skull lightly * Eileen Myles, author of Chelsea Girls *An absolute gift of a book for writers everywhere. Every single essay is a pearl * Chicago Review of Books *

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Book Synopsis''Barthes'' purpose is to tear away masks and demystify the signs, signals and symbols of the language of mass culture'' The TimesIn this magnificent and often surprising collection of essays Barthes explores the myths of mass culture. Taking subjects as diverse as wrestling, films, plastic and cars, Barthes elegantly deciphers the symbols and signs embedded deep in familiar aspects of modern life, unmasking the hidden ideologies and meanings which implicitly affect our thought and behaviour. This early classic of semiotics from one of France''s greatest thinkers may irrevocably change the way you view the world around you.Trade ReviewBarthes is an intellectual star, one of the very small group of maîtres à penser, such as Sartre, Levi-Strauss and Foucault... I readily proclaim that Mythologies is a kind of masterpiece, a fascinating book, the meaning of which sticks in the mind and can lend itself to all sorts of applications * Observer *Essays on the codings that command our daily life (from hair-styles in the film of Julius Caesar through glossy photos of gourmet cooking, to the cult of foam in detergents)...Mythologies has penetrating gusto -- Christopher Ricks * Sunday Times *Semiology is the study of the signs and signals, the symbols, gestures and messages through which western society sustains, sells, identifies and yet obscures itself by painting or powdering over its raddled, whore-like visage... Barthes' purpose is to tear away masks and demystify the signs, signals and symbols of the language of mass culture -- Dennis Potter * The Times *All about the most ordinary things. He knew how to connect Racine and beach holidays, Freud and the anticipation of a lover's phone call. Like so many modern artists, he saw the deeper themes running through supposedly banal things. -- Alain de Botton * Daily Express *

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Book SynopsisJohn Betjeman (1906-1984) was not only one of the best-loved Englishmen of the twentieth century, he was also the people's favourite poet and champion of many causes linked to the preservation of Britain's heritage. This book presents his love of railways and rail travel. It describes a journey that he made or that he planned to make.

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Book SynopsisEvery living thing has two bodies. To be an animal is to be in possession of a physical body, a body which can eat, drink and sleep; it is also to be embedded in a worldwide network of ecosystems. When every human body has an uncanny global presence, how do we live with ourselves? In this timely and elegant essay, Daisy Hildyard captures the second body by exploring how the human is a part of animal life. She meets Richard, a butcher in Yorkshire, and sees pigs turned into boiled ham; and Gina, an environmental criminologist, who tells her about leopards and silver foxes kept as pets in luxury apartments. She speaks to Luis, a biologist, about the origins of life; and talks to Nadezhda about fungi in an effort to understand how we define animal life. Eventually, her second body comes to visit her first body when the river flooded her home last year. The Second Body is a brilliantly lucid account of the dissolving boundaries between all life on earth.Trade Review‘With a voice that is both intimate and richly imaginative, [Hildyard] draws on sources spanning biology, ecology, literature, and sociology to illustrate the seeming paradox of human existence: that humans act individually and globally at once – that we act both in and on the world around us. ... Hildyard’s book is a powerful exploration of how every human is both a singular being as well as one of many in the world.’ — Publishers' Weekly‘“Another creature’s experience is different, and we do not know how it is different”, writes Daisy Hildyard in The Second Body. This playful and original essay touches on the limits of our ability to imagine that experience. Hildyard, a novelist who was trained as a historian of science, tries to find the ways we intuit boundaries between our bodies and our ecosystems, between ourselves and other animals.’ — Jennie Erin Smith, Times Literary Supplement‘These are fretful, questioning essays with occasional flashes of beauty, demanding of readers that they think about anthropogenic disruption of climate and ecology.’ — Gavin Francis, Guardian‘Part amateur detective, part visionary, Hildyard’s voice is so intelligent, beguiling and important. Like Sir Thomas Browne or even Annie Dillard, her sly variety of scientific inquiry is incandescent.’ — Rivka Galchen, author of Little Labors

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Book SynopsisGetting Lost is the diary kept by Annie Ernaux during the year and a half she had a secret love affair with a younger, married man, an attaché to the Soviet embassy in Paris. Her novel, Simple Passion, was based on this affair, but here her writing is immediate and unfiltered. In these diaries it is 1989 and Annie is divorced with two grown sons, living in the suburbs of Paris and nearing fifty. Her lover escapes the city to see her there and Ernaux seems to survive only in expectation of these encounters. She cannot write, she trudges distractedly through her various other commitments in the world, she awaits his next call; she lives merely to feel desire and for the next rendezvous. When he is gone and the moment of desire has faded, she feels that she is a step closer to death. Lauded for her spare prose, Ernaux here removes all artifice, her writing pared down to its most naked and vulnerable. Translated brilliantly for the first time by Alison L. Strayer, Getting Lost is a haunting record of a woman in the grips of love, desire and despair.Trade Review‘Annie Ernaux is one of my favorite contemporary writers, original and true. Always after reading one of her books, I walk around in her world for months.’ — Sheila Heti, author of Motherhood‘I find her work extraordinary.’ — Eimear McBride, author of A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing‘Annie Ernaux writes memoir with such generosity and vulnerable power that I find it difficult to separate my own memories from hers long after I’ve finished reading.’ — Catherine Lacey, author of Pew‘Like Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, Ernaux’s affair should be counted as one of the great liaisons of literature.... I suspect the book will become a kind of totem for lovers: a manual to help them find their centre when, like Ernaux, they are lost in love. All her books have the quality of saving frail human details from oblivion. Together they tell, in fragments, the story of a woman in the twentieth century who has lived fully, sought out pain and happiness equally and then committed her findings truthfully on paper. Her life is our inheritance.’ — Ankita Chakraborty, Guardian‘Ernaux has once more created a living document of existential terror and hope.’ — Catherine Taylor, Irish Times‘The almost primitive directness of her voice is bracing. It’s as if she’s carving each sentence onto the surface of a table with a knife.... Getting Lost is a feverish book. It’s about being impaled by desire, and about the things human beings want, as opposed to the things for which they settle... it’s one of those books about loneliness that, on every page, makes you feel less alone.’ — Dwight Garner, New York Times‘Ernaux is an unusual memoirist: she distrusts her memory… Ernaux does not so much reveal the past – she does not pretend to have any authoritative access to it – as unpack it.’ — Madeleine Schwartz, New Yorker‘Reading her is like getting to know a friend, the way they tell you about themselves over long conversations that sometimes take years, revealing things slowly, looping back to some parts of their life over and over.’ — Joanna Biggs, London Review of Books‘Ernaux has inherited de Beauvoir’s role of chronicler to a generation.’ — Margaret Drabble, New Statesman ‘Watching a skilled writer who was for years overlooked by the French literary establishment salvage an affair shrouded in such secrecy is to witness a literary feat.’ — Kaya Genç, Los Angeles Review of Books‘Across the ample particularities of over forty years and twenty-one books, almost all short, subject-driven memoirs, Ernaux has fundamentally destabilized and reinvented the genre in French literature.’ — Audrey Wollen, The Nation‘Ernaux’s writing, in Alison L. Strayer’s accomplished translation, is brazen and candid. Despite the cyclical, repetitive nature of events — the ecstasy of seeing her lover again, the dread of his leaving, the feelings of melancholy after he has departed, the agony of waiting and hoping for his call, repeated ad infinitum — the writing is urgent and gripping…She is a writer of rare calibre, a woman who writes with such honesty and, above all, humanity, as to render her work irresistible.’ — Rachel Farmer, Lunate‘From the very first lines, we feel ourselves, like her, caught up in the vertigo of waiting, obsessed by the telephone that never rings, time that passes too quickly and the meetings that become less frequent. Love, death and literature are constantly intertwined in this story that plunges us into the intimacy of a couple, without ever giving us the impression of being voyeurs.’ — Pascale Frey, ELLE‘With Getting Lost, Annie Ernaux goes for broke. The bed, the site of her pleasure, is to her what the gaming table is to the gambler, the bottle to the alcoholic, the syringe to the addict. The nexus of all danger. The goal is not, as she seems to believe and tries to make us believe, the necessity of passion: it is in reality only a pretext for her to risk her life.’ — Martine de Rabaudy, L'Express

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Book SynopsisDavid Grossman is the bestselling author of numerous works, which have been translated into thirty-six languages. His novel, A Horse Walks into a Bar, was awarded the International Man Booker Prize 2017. Grossman is also the recipient of the French Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the 2010 Frankfurt Peace Prize.

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Book SynopsisIn over 30 essays, written over 20 years, one of the world's great story-tellers meditates on story-telling. Warm, funny, generous, entertaining and, above all, deeply considered, they offer thoughts on a wide variety of topics, including the origin and composition of Philip's own stories, the craft of writing and the story-tellers who have meant the most to Philip. The art of story-telling is everywhere present in the essays themselves, in the instantly engaging tone, the vivid imagery and striking phrases, the resonant anecdotes, the humour and learnedness. Together, they are greater than the sum of their parts: a single, sustained engagement with story and story-telling.Trade ReviewAs if I'm sneaking into a year of lectures and classes with one of the masters of this art . . . Pullman shares advice, secrets, thoughts in such a down-to-earth, friendly manner, it almost makes me want to weep * Guardian, Best Books of 2017 *Pullman is eloquent on the craft and power of storytelling * Observer *A fascinating tour of Pullman's teeming imagination and an inestimable illumination of the writing life * Financial Times *Luminously written * TLS *Pullman is as fine a thinker as he is a storyteller. It's almost not fair . . . abundant wisdom, provocative notions, and illuminating insights * Kirkus starred review *

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Book SynopsisA much-loved classic of nature writing from environmentalist and the author of Waterlog, Roger Deakin, Wildwood is an exploration of the element wood in nature, our culture and our lives. ''Breathtaking, vividly written . . . reading Wildwood is an elegiac experience'' Sunday Times''He writes nature as a blackbird sings, or a bird of prey rides thermals - effortlessly.'' Reader Review ________________From the walnut tree at his Suffolk home, he embarks upon a quest that takes him through Britain, across Europe, to Central Asia and Australia, in search of what lies behind man''s profound and enduring connection with wood and trees. Meeting woodlanders of all kinds, he lives in shacks and cabins, travels in search of the wild apple groves of Kazakhstan, goes coppicing in Suffolk, swims beneath the walnut trees of the Haut-Languedoc, and hunts bush plums with Aboriginal women in thTrade ReviewFull of delight and joy and wisdom * Sunday Telegraph *With this book Roger Deakin can be counted one of the greatest of all nature writers. His beautiful book should serve to make us appreciate more keenly all that we have here on earth * Mail on Sunday *A breathtaking book * Sunday Times *A masterpiece which deserves to be read and reread * Guardian *One of my favourite kind of books. Few books make you change your habits; this one changed mine -- Will Self * New Statesman *With this book Roger Deakin can be counted one of the greatest of all nature writers. His beautiful book should serve to make us appreciate more keenly all that we have here on earth * Mail on Sunday *

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Book SynopsisFrom the best-selling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists comes a powerful new statement about feminism today written as a letter to a friend.A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a dear friend from childhood, asking her how to raise her baby girl as a feminist. Dear Ijeawele is Adichie''s letter of response.Here are fifteen invaluable suggestionscompelling, direct, wryly funny, and perceptivefor how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. From encouraging her to choose a helicopter, and not only a doll, as a toy if she so desires; having open conversations with her about clothes, makeup, and sexuality; debunking the myth that women are somehow biologically arranged to be in the kitchen making dinner, and that men can allow women to have full careers, Dear Ijeawele goes right to the heart of sexual politics in the twenty-first century. It will start a new and urgently needed conversation about what it really means to be aTrade Review‘Take note world. When Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tells you to listen, you listen’ Stylist ‘Dear Ijeawele reminds us that, in the history of feminist writing, it is often the personal and epistolary voice that carries the political story most powerfully – For me, the most powerful sentence in the book is its simplest, and comes in only the third paragraph. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie urges Ijeawele to remember to transmit to her daughter “the solid unbending belief that you start off with . . . Your feminist premise should be: I matter. I matter equally. Not ‘if only’. Not ‘as long as’. I matter equally. Full stop.”..there is no doubt that if we raised all of our daughters to believe completely that they “matter equally”, to trust what they feel and think and to worry less about how they look and come across, we would soon find new ways to challenge the multiple injustices and indignities that still limit, and even wreck, so many women’s lives.’ New Statesman Praise for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: ‘The book I'd press into the hands of girls and boys, as an inspiration for a future "world of happier men and happier women who are truer to themselves"’ Books of the Year, Independent ‘A writer with a great deal to say’ The Times 'Here is a new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers.’ Chinua Achebe ‘Adiche [has] virtuosity, boundless empathy and searing social acuity’ Dave Eggers

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Book SynopsisAn entire race was born when J.R.R. Tolkien scrawled on a leaf, ''In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.'' From the invention of that single word (hobbit) Tolkien became the explorer and chronicler of the character, their race and their significant role in his fantastical world, Middle-earth.Here in his latest book, Tolkien expert David Day unpicks the myriad of riddles, puns and mystical meanings in Tolkien''s works; The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.This work is unofficial and is not authorized by the Tolkien Estate or HarperCollins Publishers.

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Book SynopsisOne of the world''s greatest revolutionary leaders, Amílcar Cabral''s long and arduous campaign for the liberation of Portuguese-dominated Africa is explored in this vivid compilation of his most influential speeches and writings.Unity and Struggle is the compelling account of Amílcar Cabral''s fight against imperialism, discrimination and injustice, as well as his progressive advocacy for religious toleration and gender equality all of which combined to make him one of Africa''s foremost political leaders.Introduction by Basil Davidson.''One of the most lucid and brilliant leaders in Africa'' Fidel Castro ''Figures like Amílcar Cabral... helped us to imagine the horizons of freedom in far broader terms than were available to us through what we now call civil rights discourse.'' Angela Davis

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Book SynopsisTHE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER*** From the co-host of the hilarious new podcast with Richard Osman, The Rest is Entertainment *** Now includes ELEVEN new columns and a whole THREE new prime ministers.Relive the delusional fever-dream of the modern era.'Thank f*ck for Marina Hyde: the most lethal, vital, screamingly funny truth-teller of our time.'PHOEBE WALLER-BRIDGE'The most brilliantly funny columnist of our time.'GARY LINEKER'It's a scientific FACT: Marina Hyde is Britain's funniest writer.'CAITLIN MORANDrawn from her spectacularly funny Guardian columns, What Just Happened?! is a welcome blast of humour and sanity in a world where reality has become stranger than fiction. Join Hyde as she revisits every moment of magic, from David Cameron to Theresa May to Boris Johnson to Rishi Sunak. Did we miss anyone? Boggle at the cast of characters: Hollywood sex offenders, populists, sporting heroes (and villains), media barons, reality TV monsters, police officers, wicked advisers, philanthropists, fauxlanthropists, frostbitten princes and (naturally) Gwyneth Paltrow. It's the full state banquet of crazy - and you're most cordially invited.'A joyous rallying voice in British journalism.'GRAYSON PERRY'An infinite number of gag-writers, working all day in a gag factory, couldn't come up with any of the perfectly-formed one-liners that populate Marina Hyde's hilarious writing . . . But behind the wit lurks real anger, argument, exasperation and intelligence. Her writing is more than a gentle poke in the ribs: it's a well-wrought and deftly aimed smash in the teeth.'ARMANDO IANNUCCI

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Book Synopsis'Ought to become a classic. It is an enshrinement of [Meades's] intense baroque and catholic cleverness' Roger Lewis, The Times'One of the foremost prose stylists of his age in any register . . . Probably we don’t deserve Meades, a man who apparently has never composed a dull paragraph' Steven Poole, Guardian'There are more gems in this wonderful book than I could cram into a dozen of these columns' Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph'Such a useful and important critic . . . He is very much on the reader’s side, bringing his full wit to bear on every single thing he writes' Nicholas Lezard, SpectatorThis landmark publication collects three decades of writing from one of the most original, provocative and consistently entertaining voices of our time. Anyone who cares about language and culture should have this book in their life.Thirty years ago, Jonathan Meades published a volume of reportorial journalism, essays, criticism, squibs and fictions called Peter Knows What Dick Likes. The critic James Wood was moved to write: ‘When journalism is like this, journalism and literature become one.’Pedro and Ricky Come Again is every bit as rich and catholic as its predecessor. It is bigger, darker, funnier and just as impervious to taste and manners. It bristles with wit and pin-sharp eloquence, whether Meades is contemplating northernness in a German forest or hymning the virtues of slang.From the indefensibility of nationalism and the ubiquitous abuse of the word ‘iconic’, to John Lennon’s shopping lists and the wine they call Black Tower, the work assembled here demonstrates Meades's unparalleled range and erudition, with pieces on cities, artists, sex, England, France, concrete, faith, politics, food, history and much, much more.Trade Review 'Ought to become a classic. It is an enshrinement of [Meades's] intense baroque and catholic cleverness' Roger Lewis, The Times 'One of the foremost prose stylists of his age in any register . . . Probably we don’t deserve Meades, a man who apparently has never composed a dull paragraph' Steven Poole, Guardian 'There are more gems in this wonderful book than I could cram into a dozen of these columns' Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph 'As Meades puts it, who wants friendliness from books or from buildings? . . . Meades has sought to make a book shaped like his beloved Blenheim Palace: brutalist, arrogant; a moving finger' Frances Wilson, TLS 'Such a useful and important critic . . . There is not a sentence here that is not armoured with intelligence, and very few, if any, that are not, in their way, a delight to read' Nicholas Lezard, Spectator 'Meades has the panache and fearlessness to pull it all off' Literary Review 'The consistency in quality and style are remarkable . . . It’s writing that has a pop; essaying that puts its pint glass down with a slam, then offers you another. Positively curt and classy' Irish Times 'This vast compendium has something to inform, amuse, shock or repulse on nearly every page' Paul Finch, Architects' Journal 'Gargantuan and whip-smart . . . Meades emerges as a fiercely independent thinker and a formidable intellect. His acerbic style carries the day, and readers bored of dry criticism will relish these piquant ripostes' Publishers Weekly

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Book SynopsisOne of our leading thinkersforges a new language for feminism, weaving together stories of visionary women past and present, and their paths of defiance. A decade on from its first publication, Jacqueline Rose'sWomen in Dark Timesis as urgent and compelling as ever.

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Book SynopsisA NEW, REVISED EDITION OF THE ULTIMATE NORA EPHRON COLLECTION, PACKED WITH WIT, WISDOM AND COMFORT, WITH AN INTRODUCTION FROM CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS'The perfect introduction to the iconic writer' STYLISTINCLUDING:* Nora's much-loved essays on everything from friendship to feminism to journalism* Extracts from her bestselling novel Heartburn* Scenes from her hilarious screenplay for When Harry Met Sally* Unparalleled advice about friends, lovers, divorces, desserts and black turtleneck sweaters'It's got a little bit of everything, from witty essays on feminism, beauty, and ageing to profiles of empowering female figures' ELLE*PRAISE FOR NORA EPHRON*'So bold and so vulnerable at the same time. I don't know how she did it' PHOEBE WALLER-BRIDGE'Nora's exacting, precise, didactic, tried-and-tested, sophisticated-woman-wearing-all-black wisdom is a comfort and a relief' DOLLY ALDERTON'Nora Ephron is the funniest, cleverest, wisest friend you could have' NIGELLA LAWSON'I am only the one of millions of women who will miss Nora's voice' LENA DUNHAM

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Book SynopsisBased on lectures given at Cambridge colleges and first published by the Hogarth Press in 1929, A Room of One’s Own is an extended essay about the predicament of female writers and a stirring call for autonomy and recognition. As well as settling scores with reactionary critics and laying the foundations of a history of women’s literature, the text is also a triumph of imagination, with a celebrated passage envisaging the fate of a fictional sister of Shakespeare’s. A seminal, widely studied feminist polemic that touches on both literature and politics, A Room of One’s Own is essential reading for those wishing to understand the progress that has been made in women’s rights and the struggles that still lie ahead.Trade ReviewShe was doing with language something like what Jimi Hendrix does with a guitar. -- Michael Cunningham

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Book SynopsisAnnie Ernaux’s father died exactly two months after she passed her exams for a teaching certificate. Barely educated and valued since childhood strictly for his labour, Ernaux’s father had grown into a hard, practical man who showed his family little affection. Narrating his slow ascent towards material comfort, Ernaux’s cold observation in A Man’s Place reveals the shame that haunted her father throughout his life. She scrutinizes the importance he attributed to manners and language that came so unnaturally to him as he struggled to provide for his family with a grocery store and cafe in rural France. Over the course of the book, Ernaux grows up to become the uncompromising observer now familiar to the world, while her father matures into old age with a staid appreciation for life as it is and for a daughter he cautiously, even reluctantly admires.Trade Review‘Ernaux has inherited de Beauvoir’s role of chronicler to a generation.’ — Margaret Drabble, New Statesman‘A lesser writer would turn these experiences into misery memoirs, but Ernaux does not ask for our pity – or our admiration. It’s clear from the start that she doesn’t much care whether we like her or not, because she has no interest in herself as an individual entity. She is an emblematic daughter of emblematic French parents, part of an inevitable historical process, which includes breaking away. Her interest is in examining the breakage.... Ernaux is the betrayer and her father the betrayed: this is the narrative undertow that makes A Man's Place so lacerating.’ — Frances Wilson, Telegraph‘Not simply a short biography of man manacled to class assumptions, this is also, ironically, an exercise in the art of unsentimental writing ... The biography is also self-reflexive in its inquiry and suggests the question: what does it mean to contain a life within a number of pages?’ — Mia Colleran, Irish Times ‘Ernaux understands that writing about her parents is a form of betrayal. That she writes about their struggle to understand the middle-class literary world into which she has moved makes that betrayal all the more painful. But still she does it – and it is thrilling to read Ernaux working out, word by word, what she deems appropriate to include in each text. In being willing to show her discomfort, her disdain and her honest, careful consideration of the dilemmas of writing about real, lived lives, Ernaux has struck upon a bold new way to write memoir.’ — Ellen Pierson-Hagger, New Statesman‘No-one writes about family relationships with the nuance, both emotional and analytical, that Ernaux does, and such a reflective, self-critical perspective is even more precious. Her exploration of language in their household is sharp.... It might initially be read as a cold portrait, but the emotions and passionate thought rage through the taut writing. Likened to Simone de Beauvoir for her astute chronicling of a generation, Ernaux’s prose is intimate and unforgettable.’ — Dazed‘An unsentimental portrait of a man loved as a parent, admired as an individual but, because of habits and education, heartbreakingly apart. Moving and memorable.’ — Kirkus‘An affecting portrait of a man whose own peasant upbringing typified the adage that a child should never be better educated than his parents.’ — Publishers Weekly

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Book SynopsisA Times book of the yearA Guardian book of the yearMagnificent'The TimesDazzling' New StatesmanIt filled me with hope' Zadie SmithWhat happens to our behaviour when we live most of our lives online? What does it mean to always be optimising'? And what is it about scams and the millennial generation?Offering nuanced and witty reflections on feminism, reality TV, the internet, drugs, identity and more, Trick Mirror is a multifaceted, thought-provoking and entertaining response to our zeitgeist a must-read for anyone interested in the way we live and think today.Trade Review‘A masterclass in how to think about the world’ Samantha Irby ‘Thoroughly enjoyable’ Vogue ‘There is one guarantee with this book: it will make you stop and think … Tolentino’s writing will leave you feeling a bit more humble, and a bit more intelligent’ Independent ‘Hardcore modern intellectualism with a side of memes’ Daily Telegraph ‘A page-turning holiday read’ Elle ‘An astute and exciting new voice’ Financial Times (Books of the Year) ‘A bold and playful collection from a hugely talented writer’ Guardian ‘The best young essayist at work in the United States’ Rebecca Solnit ‘The millennial Susan Sontag, a brilliant voice in cultural criticism. . . She remains engaged with her subjects even as she scratches her head and wonders why we do what we do. Even better: She writes like a dream’ Washington Post ‘Jia Tolentino could be the Joan Didion of our time’ Vulture ‘She is the kind of writer who is talked about with a mixture of rapturous admiration and pained envy … dazzling’ New Statesman ‘The Book of the Moment’ Vice ‘Magnificent … her position as the pre-eminent genius among the millennial intellectuals is self-assured’ The Times ‘This is electrifying, vital writing’ Louise O’Neill

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Book SynopsisAre We Human? rethinks the philosophy of design in a multi-dimensional exploration from the very first tools and ornaments to the constant buzz of social media. The average day involves the experience of thousands of layers of design that reach to outside space but also reach deep into our bodies and brains. Even the planet itself has been completely encrusted by design as a geological layer. There is no longer an outside to the world of design. Design has become the world. Design is what makes the human. It is the very basis of social life. But design also engineers inequalities and new forms of neglect, such as lawlessness, poverty, and the climate at the same time as the human genome and the weather are being actively redesigned. We can no longer reassure ourselves with the idea of "good design." Design itself needs to be redesigned.

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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. In The Prevention of Literature, the third in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell considers the freedom of thought and expression. He discusses the effect of the ownership of the press on the accuracy of reports of events, and takes aim at political language, which ‘consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together.’ The Prevention of Literature is a stirring cry for freedom from censorship, which Orwell says must start with the writer themselves: ‘To write in plain vigorous language one has to think fearlessly.’Trade Review'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' Irish TimesTable of ContentsWhy I Write, Note on the Text, Notes, A Brief Biographical Sketch of George Orwell

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Book SynopsisWith an anthology edited by Tom Wolfe and E. W. Johnson

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Book SynopsisPresents travel writings which chronicle the author's perilous journeys through Japan and also capture his vision of eternity in the transient world around him.Table of ContentsThe Narrow Road to the Deep NorthAcknowledgmentsIntroductionThe Records of a Weather-Exposed SkeletonA Visit to the Kashima ShrineThe Records of a Travel-Worn SatchelA Visit to Sarashina VillageThe Narrow Road to the Deep NorthMap 1. Central JapanMap 2. Central JapanMap 3. Northern JapanNotes

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Book SynopsisWhen all else fails, when our compass is broken, there is one thing some of us have come to rely on: music really can give us a sense of something like home. With It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track, legendary music critic Ian Penman reaches for a vanished moment in musical history when cultures collided and a certain kind of cross-generational and cross-colour' awareness was born. His cast of characters includes the Mods, James Brown, Charlie Parker, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, John Fahey, Steely Dan and Prince black artists who were innovators, and white musicians who copied them for the mainstream. In prose that glides and shimmies and pivots on risky metaphors, low puns and highbrow reference points' (Brian Dillon, frieze), Ian Penman's first book in twenty years is cause for celebration.

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Book Synopsis''A joyous multiplicity of writings incorporating collective manifestos, poetry, fiction, and autobiography... endlessly fascinating'' Catherine Taylor, Financial Times''A tour de force of feminist thinking, spanning seven centuries and multiple continents'' Jennifer Thomson, Review 31''The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing rounds up the voices of women from across history to discuss the meaning and practice of feminism. This is a book that every person should read: the multiplicity of voices from various times and spaces allows women of the past alongside women of the present to be noisy about why feminism matters. It is a collective masterpiece'' Helen Carr, BBC History, Books of the Year''Bulging with brilliant and exciting writing. Its vast sweep takes us from the 15th century, when Christine de Pizan, a court writer in medieval France, imagined a City of Ladies where women would be safe from harassment, through to the present day, with work by Maggie Nelson, Eileen Myles, Rachel Cusk, Deborah Levy and Lola Olufemi'' Rachel Cooke, ObserverEdited with an Introduction by Hannah DawsonTrade ReviewA vast global project ... a joyous multiplicity of writings incorporating collective manifestos, poetry, fiction, and autobiography ... Readers will find both old acquaintances and new discoveries ... admirably and intentionally reaching beyond received western ideas ... an endlessly fascinating anthology -- Catherine Taylor * Financial Times *Bulging with brilliant and exciting writing. Its vast sweep takes us from the 15th century, when Christine de Pizan, a court writer in medieval France, imagined a City of Ladies where women would be safe from harassment, through to the present day, with work by Maggie Nelson, Eileen Myles, Rachel Cusk, Deborah Levy and Lola Olufemi -- Rachel Cooke * Observer *The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing rounds up the voices of women from across history to discuss the meaning and practice of feminism. This is a book that every person should read: the multiplicity of voices from various times and spaces allows women of the past alongside women of the present to be noisy about why feminism matters. It is a collective masterpiece -- Helen Carr * BBC History BOOKS OF THE YEAR *A glorious history of women's struggle for liberation from 1405 to 2020, featuring rebellious feminists of all stripes -- Megan Clement * Australian Book Review *Dawson has curated a tour de force of feminist thinking, spanning seven centuries and multiple continents, and drawing impressively across genre. Playwrights sit alongside political theorists, followed by poetry or fiction. Feminism appears as a vibrant, multi-faceted thing, changing and evolving but ever-present across the centuries ... This collection is not only interested in feminism as a political ideology, but feminism as a creative and artistic force ... what strikes the reader most is the palpable anger that rings across so many of these selections ... This anger was refreshing, a reminder that through the centuries women have had, and continue to have, so much to be angry about ... This book is an important reminder that feminism doesn't need tote bags or novelty jumpers. It doesn't need to be happy and sparkly all the time. Instead, it needs the imaginative, powerful, collective scream into the void that a collection like this provides -- Jennifer Thomson * Review 31 *

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Book Synopsis''Dazzling ... in her kaleidoscopic essays, memoir has been shattered into sliding and overlapping pieces ... mind-expanding'' The New York Times Book Review Esmé Weijun Wang was officially diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in 2013, although the hallucinations and psychotic episodes had started years before that. In the midst of a high functioning life at Yale, Stanford and the literary world, she would find herself floored by an overwhelming terror that ''spread like blood'', or convinced that she was dead, or that her friends were robots, or spiders were eating holes in her brain. What happens when your whole conception of yourself is turned upside down? When you''re aware of what is occurring to you, but unable to do anything about it? Written with immediacy and unflinching honesty, this visceral and moving book is Wang''s story, as she steps both inside and outside of her condition to bring it to light. Following her own diagnosis and the many manifestations of schizophrenia in her life, she ranges over everything from how we label mental illness to her own use of fashion and make-up to present herself as high-functioning, from the failures of the higher education system to how factors such as PTSD and Lyme disease compounded her experiences. Wang''s analytical, intelligent eye, honed as a former lab researcher at Stanford, allows her to balance research with haunting personal narrative. The Collected Schizophrenias cuts right to the core and provides unique insight into a condition long misdiagnosed and much misunderstood.Trade ReviewWang's story is devastating... she is wise and eloquent, and heart-rendingly honest on the effects of the illness * Spectator *Wang writes about how mental illness is framed both within the medical system and by society...The word ["schizophrenia"] is often misused and trivialised...Wang's narrative, without pulling punches, goes a long way to dispelling such views...many would benefit from this book and I highly recommend it, both for the author's clarity and, ultimately, her expression of hope * The Lancet *Fragmented by design, the book's structure heightens the immediacy of its testimony * New Yorker *Impressive ... we learn what schizophrenia feels like from the inside. Wang strikes a perfect balance between explanation and implication * Brooklyn Rail *In Wang's kaleidoscopic essays, memoir has been shattered into sliding and overlapping pieces. . . . The images and insights Wang summons are . . . often dazzling, and well worth the reconstructive work. . . . Her multifaceted arguments can be gratifyingly mind-expanding. * The New York Times Review of Books *[An] utterly unique book of essays: a deep, illuminating, and explosively written dive into a life of living with mental illness * Entertainment Weekly *Wang . . . is an implicitly trustworthy guide to this netherworld of psychosis and chronic illness. . . . Her characteristic nuance more often carries the ring of wisdom, hard won * Washington Post *The Collected Schizophrenias is riveting, honest, and courageously allows for complexities in the reality of what living with illness is like--and we are lucky to have it in the world * NPR *[The Collected Schizophrenias is] resoundingly intelligent, often unexpectedly funny, questioning, fearless and peerless, as Wang makes for brilliant company on 13 difficult walks through largely uncharted territory * Los Angeles Times *Going beyond her personal story, Wang applies her experience as a former lab researcher at Stanford to add an analytical perspective to The Collected Schizophrenias, which gives readers an inside look into the often-misunderstood intricacies of mental health * Time *Intimate, urgent, and powerful. . . . Wang writes generously about the manifestations of schizophrenia in her life . . . and lends her keen analysis to the big, ethical questions about how we treat those whose experience of the world differs from ours * Buzzfeed *Wang writes with lucid clarity. . . . Harrowing and heartfelt. * Star Tribune *An intimate, rigorously researched, collectio * BBC Culture *In a voice both laboratorial and poetic, Wang examines her own diagnosis, as well as her PTSD and Lyme disease, with a gentleness and frankness that mesmerizes and demystifies * The Week *Wang is a brilliant writer. . . . This intimate essay collection grapples with her diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder and all the sorrow and searching that comes with it. Always artful and illuminating, never facile * Vulture *Wang's clear-eyed look into a complicated reality makes this is an essential read for anyone who better wants to understand why we treat each other--and ourselves--so harshly at any display of weakness; it's a book of compassion and brilliance, an unflinching look at a topic that has long repelled too many of us. * NYLON *Esmé Weijun Wang's compelling essays highlight the humanity behind a schizophrenia diagnosis, delivering a necessary read tackling mental illness * Paste *Wang creates an unforgettable portrait of a singular brain * Refinery29 *Wang is a highly articulate and graceful essayist, and her insights, in both the clinical and general senses, are exceptional. * Los Angeles Review of Books *Wang writes brilliantly and beautifully about lives lived with mental illness * The Millions *In writing about her experiences, Wang puts a face to the silent suffering of millions of people. Her searing honesty coupled with the strength of her writing make The Collected Schizophrenias a remarkable look into a little-understood part of the human condition * Chicago Review of Books *An illuminating, breathtaking look into the underexplored world of schizophrenia, with the rare perspective of someone who's actually been there * mindbodygreen *Wang . . . eloquently balances personal narrative and empirical research to offer a powerful series of insights into a woefully misunderstood world. * SF Weekly *This beautifully written work will expand your thinking about severe mental illness and mental illness in general * Rewire.News *The Collected Schizophrenias is illumination and important--not only because it educates and challenges--but because it forces us to consider how much we still have to work to undo historical and systematic damage, to challenge our own broken, misguided partiality towards what it means to be healthy and sane * The Arkansas International *[The Collected Schizophrenias] organizes the confusion, terror and complexity of [Wang's] experience into an imperfectly cohesive, profoundly illuminating whole. * Shelf Awareness *Penetrating and revelatory. * Publisher's Weekly *This mesmerizing collection of essays has achieved the rarest of rarities--a meaningful and expansive language for a subject that has been long bound by both deep revulsion and intense fascination -- Jenny ZhangA brilliant guide to the complexities of thinking about illness, and mental illness, in particular. It will bring hope to others searching to understand their own diagnoses -- Meghan O'RourkeA masterful braiding of the achingly personal and the incisively researched. . . . This book is a vital, illuminating window onto the world we all already live in, but find all too easy to ignore -- Alexandra KleemanYou won't find any pity-baiting, sensationalism, or false positivity here; Wang is so candidly aware that I'd trust her over my own diary -- Tony TulathimutteEsmé Weijun Wang offers us an all-access pass to her beautiful, unquiet mind. . . Rarely has a book about living with mental illness felt so immediate, raw, and powerful -- Dani ShapiroThe Collected Schizophrenias is at once generous and brilliantly nuanced, rigorous and bold. It had me rethinking what it is to be well or ill. -- R.O. KwonEsmé Weijun Wang sends out revelatory dispatches from an under-mapped land, shot like arrows in all directions from a taut bow of a mind. . . . Her work changes the way we think about illness - which is to say that it changes us -- Whiting Award Selection Committee

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Book SynopsisFrom the Bible through Dante and up to Treblinka and Guantánamo Bay, here is a rich source for nightmares. --The New York Times Book ReviewThree thousand years of visions of Hell, from the ancient Near East to modern AmericaA Penguin ClassicFrom the Hebrew Bible's shadowy realm of Sheol to twenty-first-century visions of Hell on earth, The Penguin Book of Hell takes us through three thousand years of eternal damnation. Along the way, you'll take a ferry ride with Aeneas to Hades, across the river Acheron; meet the Devil as imagined by a twelfth-century Irish monk--a monster with a thousand giant hands; wander the nine circles of Hell in Dante's Inferno, in which gluttons, liars, heretics, murderers, and hypocrites are made to endure crime-appropriate torture; and witness the debates that raged in Victorian England when new scientific advances cast doubt on the idea of an eternal hereafter. Drawing upon religious poetry, epics, Trade Review“Now that I know what Hell is like, I shall take more pains to avoid it. This is an amazing collection.” —Philip Pullman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Golden Compass“Quite terrifying.” —The New Yorker“You will be [frightened] by The Penguin Book of Hell, in which writers from antiquity to the 20th century describe the eternal, infernal hereafter. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” —The Washington Post“This fascinating collection kept me reading long after midnight, and the images it put in my head kept me up even longer. A deeply engaging read.” —Amy Brady, Chicago Review of Books, “The Best Horror Nonfiction Books of 2018”“One of the prime motives of these texts is rage, rage against people occupying positions of exceptional trust and power who lie and cheat and trample on the most basic values and yet who escape the punishment they so manifestly deserve. History is an unending chronicle of such knaves, and it is a chronicle too of frustration and impotence, certainly among the mass of ordinary people but even among those who feel that they are stakeholders in the system. Hell is the last recourse of political impotence. You console yourself . . . by imagining that the loathsome characters you detest will meet their comeuppance in the afterlife.” —Stephen Greenblatt, The New York Review of Books“Disturbing . . . Full of classic representations of eternal punishment.” —America: The Jesuit Review“Harrowing . . . To recognize hell in the realm of reality is to understand its true role in our lives right now—and to begin to articulate the good life we hope someday to earn. Be not distracted: the glimpses of hell do us good.” —Lapham’s Quarterly“Includes a hefty (and fascinating) selection of readings from medieval manuals . . . Bruce’s most fascinating section is his final, which examines how the rhetoric of hell has utility in the contemporary era, including . . . an astounding essay by an American prisoner in solitary confinement with the unlikely name of William Blake, and the track list for torturers at the Guantánamo Bay detention center whose ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques included repeatedly blasting at ear-splitting decibels songs like Marilyn Manson’s ‘The Beautiful People,’ Britney Spears’s ‘…Baby One More Time,’ and the ‘Meow Mix’ commercial jingle.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “Like so many of the Penguin Classics collections, it is thoughtful, expansive, accessible to the intelligent reader and the inquiring mind. . . . It’s quite a read, and it’s certainly not something you probably want to read right before bedtime, not right before going to sleep, but certainly a book that will make you think about life, about being human, and about what might await us in the future.” —WBAA

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Book Synopsis''A brave, beautiful book that could double as a handbook to accompany anyone on their journey through cancer'' Jackie Kay, New StatesmanThe Cancer Journals is an intimate, poetic and invigorating account of the experience of breast cancer, from biopsy to mastectomy, told by the great feminist and activist Audre Lorde.Moving between journal entry, memoir, and essay, Lorde fuses the personal and political to reflect on the many questions breast cancer raises: questions of survival, sexuality, prosthesis and self-care. It is a journey of survival, friendship, and self-acceptance. ''Grief, terror, courage, the passion for survival and for more than survival, are here in the searchings of a great poet'' Adrienne Rich''This book teaches me that with one breast or none, I am still me'' Alice WalkerTrade ReviewLorde's big heart and fierce mind are at full strength on each page of this deeply personal and deeply political collection ... A raw reckoning with illness and death as well as a challenge to the conventional expectations of women with cancer. More universally, Lorde's rage and the clarity that follows offer us a blueprint for facing our mortality and living boldly in the time we have. This empowering compilation is heartbreaking, beautiful, and timeless. * Kirkus STARRED REVIEW *Radiates with rebellion, even decades later... she is both brave and right. Embracing her one-breasted self, Lorde refuses to render invisible her difference and the experience of pain that is somehow embarrassing to others... There is inspiration in Lorde's position, for me and for all women who have spent time in doctors' offices and surgeries... Making my way through the book's pages, I found a different model of feminist power - not a sidestepping of sickness, but a defiant avowal of the reality of pain and respect for the transformed self it leaves behind -- Rafia Zakaria * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review[A] startling collection of essays . . . The passion and beauty of her voice is unabated . . . Azadi is the outcome of a life of writing from the frontline of solidarity and humanism, and from a writer who is perhaps only now reaching the height of her literary powers * Guardian *An eloquent and scorching indictment of the growing authoritarianism of Hindu nationalism . . . it is a tour de force * i *Azadi is a deeply-committed literary artist’s vision of what is wrong with our world today and a heartfelt appeal to join together to try and heal the wounds before it is too late * Telegraph India *

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