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Book SynopsisAurochs and Auks is a deeply moving and intelligent meditation on the natural processes of death and extinction, renewal and continuity. Prompted by his own near-death in a time of pandemic, John Burnside explores the history of the auroch (Bos primigenius), the wild cattle that has become the source of so much sacred and cultural imagery across Europe, from the Minotaur and the Cretan bull dances to Spanish corrida traditions. He then tells the story of the Great Auk, a curious bird whose extinction in the mid-nineteenth century was caused by human persecution and before stepping into multiple extinctions of the outer and inner world.Trade ReviewWritten with both erudite ire and a longing soul, this is a work of a beautiful mind - Jay Griffiths

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Book SynopsisFollowing on from the huge success ofBeneath My Feet: Writers on WalkingandSauntering: Writers Walk Europe, Duncan Minshull brings together over fifty walker-writers who have travelled the world's seven continents. With contributions from Edith Wharton, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, Rabindranath Tagore, D. H. Lawrence, Isabella Bird, Katherine Mansfield, Rachel Carson, Jean-Paul Clébert, Colin Thubron, William Boyd and many more,Globetrottingtakes us across the streets of London, Rome, Melbourne, Cairo, Kyiv and Kabul; through the frozen wastes of Antarctica; along the pilgrim paths of Japan; into the jungles of Ghana; around the Great Wall of China.

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Book Synopsis20-something and uncertain about her future, Florentyna Leow is exhilarated when an old acquaintance offers her an opportunity for work and cohabitation in a little house in the hills of Kyoto. Florentyna begins a new job as a tour guide, taking tourists on elaborate and expensive trips around Kyoto's cultural hotspots. Amidst the busy tourist traps and overrun temples, Florentyna develops her own personal map of the city: a favourite smoky jazz kissa; a top-shelf katsuobushi loving cat; an elderly lady named Yamaguchi-san, who shares her sweets and gives Florentyna a Japanese name. Meanwhile, her relationship with her new companion develops an intensity as they live and work together. Their little kitchen, the epicenter of their shared life, overlooks a community garden dominated by a fruitful persimmon tree. Their relationship burns bright, but seasons change, the persimmon tree out back loses its fruit, and things grow strange between the two women.Trade Review"O would let Leow's writing take me anywhere, but in these pages Kyoto transpires to be a particularly meaningful and enchanted destination for her to transport her reader. Friendship, food, language, tour-guiding, and all the myriad kinds of love-whatever she's addressing in the moment, her fragrant, juice-filled prose is coated in a crispy-soft casing of wisdom, self awareness and compassion." - Polly Barton, author of Fifty Sounds; "This writing is so beautiful it makes you feel tipsy and warm like a sherry at Christmas." - Kathryn Williams, singer, songwriter and novelist (The Ormering Tide); "So atmospheric and transporting, I couldn’t wait to get back to it and keep reading." - Emily Itami, author of Fault Lines; "The book does not gush about Japan, which I appreciate, nor does it tear it down. She never holds back when it comes to her own emotions. But when it comes to the outside world in which she positions herself as an onlooker, she is generous, funny, blunt as she needs to be, mindful of where she stands. The persimmon tree. Just read how she writes about the persimmon tree. You will fall in love." - Yuki Tejima, @booknerdtokyo; "Leow's collection is a beautifully written exploration of friendship, making a city your home and heartbreak through food writing, travel, cultural and social explorations and elements of memoir. It should be too much for such a slim volume, but it works perfectly." - Sophie for Books, Burgers and Backpacks; "Leow has a way with words that carried me into each moment so evocatively that I devoured this short novel in one session: there is a lyricism to every description she delivers...The writing is beautiful, the language evocative and the experience of reading this one to remember. I definitely recommend getting hold of a copy" - Bookaholic Bex; "It took approximately one sentence for me to know this was going to be one of my favourite books of this year. Leow's storytelling is simply exquisite and I could envision the settings and moment so vividly in my mind that I barely wanted to put the book down to write this. It's a book that I want to both devour immediately but also savour slowly to try and appreciate the work Leow has put into it" - Rhi, @thewordslikedust

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Book SynopsisIn his foreword to The Ways of Paradise, Peter Cornell presents this so-called found manuscript, the work of a now-deceased, obscure researcher who spent three decades in the National Library of Sweden working on his magnum opus. Upon his death, no trace of this work remains aside from this set of notes and fragments which form an enigmatic set of texts on the connections between art, literature, spirituality and the occult through history, with a particular focus on spirals and labyrinths. Ranging from the Crusades to Ruskin, Freud to surrealism, cubism, automatic writing, Duchamp, the Manhattan Project, Pollock and Smithson, this cult book, first published in Sweden in 1987, is translated into English for the first time by Saskia Vogel.

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Book SynopsisAdapted from a series of four lectures, originally delivered as the first of the Granada Northern Lectures Peter Brook''s The Empty Space is an exploration of four aspects of theatre, ''Deadly, Holy, Rough and Immediate'', published in Penguin Modern Classics.''I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage''In The Empty Space, groundbreaking director Peter Brook draws on a life in love with the stage to explore the issues facing any theatrical performance. Here he describes important developments in theatre from the last century, as well as smaller scale events, from productions by Stanislavsky to the rise of Method Acting, from Brecht''s revolutionary alienation technique to the free form Happenings of the 1960s, and from the different styles of such great Shakespearean actors as John Gielgud and Paul Scofield to a joyous impromptu performance in the burnt-out shell of the Hamburg Opera just after the war. Passionate, unconventional and fascinati

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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. Shooting an Elephant, the fifth in the Orwell's Essays series, tells the story of a police officer in Burma who is called upon to shoot an aggressive elephant. Thought to be loosely based on Orwell's own experiences in Burma, the tightly written essay weaves together fact and fiction indistinguishably, and leaves the reader contemplating the heavy topic of colonialism, with the words 'when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys' echoing from the page.Trade Review'A writer who can - and must - be rediscovered with every age.' (Irish Times) 'A remarkable piece.' (Jeremy Paxman)Table of ContentsShooting an Elephant, Note on the Text, Notes, A Brief Biographical Sketch of George Orwell

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Book SynopsisWith the death of her aunt, Maria Stepanova is left to sift through an apartment full of faded photographs, old postcards, letters, diaries, and heaps of souvenirs: a withered repository of a century of life in Russia. Carefully reassembled with calm, steady hands, these shards tell the story of how a seemingly ordinary Jewish family somehow managed to survive the myriad persecutions and repressions of the last century. Dipping into various forms – essay, fiction, memoir, travelogue and historical documents – Stepanova’s In Memory of Memory assembles a vast panorama of ideas and personalities and offers an entirely new and bold exploration of cultural and personal memory.Trade Review‘Stepanova’s tour de force blends memoir, literary criticism, essay and fiction. Although this is a personal and intimate work using photographs, postcards and diaries, it succeeds in mining a universal theme in contemporary Russian cultural life: how does a family – or a country – process the events of the past 100 years?’ — Viv Groskop, Guardian‘A brilliant evocation of the last years of the Soviet Union, extending deep into the past. In a work that crosses the boundaries of fiction and nonfiction, Russian poet and journalist Stepanova recounts the lives of her ancestors, rural Russian Jews who, on moving to Moscow, could never quite go home again…. Apart from delivering a mine of family and national history, Stepanova exercises a well-honed sense of the apposite literary allusion (“The chimneys in the view from the window resembled flowerpots, Kafka said something similar about them”). Stretching from the days before Lenin took power to the “Doctor’s Plot” and the collapse of the USSR and beyond, Stepanova’s book is lyrical and philosophical throughout…. A remarkable work of the imagination – and, yes, memory.’ — Kirkus, starred review‘This remarkable account of the author’s Russian-Jewish family expands into a reflection on the role of art and ethics in informing memory.… Stepanova is both sensitive and rigorous.’ — New Yorker‘A luminous, rigorous, and mesmerizing interrogation of the relationship between personal history, family history, and capital-H History. I couldn’t put it down; it felt sort of like watching a hypnotic YouTube unboxing-video of the gift-and-burden that is the twentieth century. In Memory of Memory has that trick of feeling both completely original and already classic, and I confidently expect this translation to bring Maria Stepanova a rabid fan base on the order of the one she already enjoys in Russia.’ — Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot‘There is simply no book in contemporary Russian literature like In Memory of Memory. A microcosm all its own, it is an inimitable journey through a family history which, as the reader quickly realizes, becomes a much larger quest than yet another captivating family narrative. Why? Because it asks us if history can be examined at all, yes, but does so with incredible lyricism and fearlessness. Because Stepanova teaches us to find beauty where no one else sees it. Because Stepanova teaches us to show tenderness towards the tiny, awkward, missed details of our beautiful private lives. Because she shows us that in the end our hidden strangeness is what makes us human. This, I think, is what makes her a truly major European writer. I am especially grateful to Sasha Dugdale for her precise and flawless translation which makes this book such a joy to read in English. This is a voice to live with.’ — Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic‘Dazzling erudition and deep empathy come together in Maria Stepanova’s profound engagement with the power and potential of memory, the mother of all muses. An exploration of the vast field between reminiscence and remembrance, In Memory of Memory is a poetic appraisal of the ways the stories of others are the fabric of our history.’ — Esther Kinsky, author of Grove‘Extraordinary – a work of haunting power, grace and originality’ — Philippe Sands, author of East West Street‘The poet Maria Stepanova’s In Memory of Memory, beautifully translated by Sasha Dugdale, is a deeply intelligent quest for the significance of minutiae that survive while grand narratives of history sweep over them. It makes for powerful and magical reading, reminiscent of Nabokov’s Speak Memory. Time and again the sheer richness of the task sustains us and drives us on. This is a wholly marvellous book that extends our knowledge of all that is valued and lost.’ — George Szirtes, author of The Photographer at Sixteen

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Book SynopsisIn The Four Elements, poet and philosopher John O'Donohue draws upon his Celtic heritage and the love of his native landscape, the west of Ireland, to weave together a tapestry of beautifully evoked images of nature. As John explores a range of themes relating to the way we live our lives today, he reveals how the energy and rhythm of the natural world - its innocence and creativity, its power and splendour - hold profound lessons for us all. With a foreword written by his beloved brother Pat, this illuminating treasury is a unique collection of reflections inspired by the ancient wisdom of this earth.Trade ReviewThere are certain threads that run through the work of John O'Donohue. They manifest themselves with different colours and textures. The form may change for different purposes of rhythm and resonance, but the intention remains constant. It is grounded in human vulnerability and the desire, the longing, for a connection to the wonder of the divine in nature, and human life within it. -- Michael D Higgins, politician and broadcaster

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewWonderful . . . full of wit and erudition * Telegraph *A brilliant, original approach to literature, a key to Calvino's own work and a thoroughly delightful and illuminating commentary on some of the world's greatest writing * San Francisco Chronicle *I have always liked Calvino and after reading this book, I like him even more -- Wang Xiaobo * The Pleasures of Thinking *Rich and deeply satisfying ... this is very much a book that sets you off thinking ... there is a universe in here -- Nick Lezard * Guardian *Praise for Italo Calvino -- :A genial as well as a brilliant writer -- John UpdikeCalvino will continue to glitter, this strange, lonely prospector in the universe of words. . . a master in the empire of the imagination -- Ian Thomson * Independent *Reading Calvino, you're constantly assailed by the notion that he is writing down what you have always known, except that you've never thought of it before . . . he tells us, joyfully, wickedly, that there are things in the world worth loving as well as hating; and that such things exist in people, too. I can think of no finer writer to have beside me while Italy explodes, while Britain burns, while the world ends. -- Salman RushdieNo-one can read Angela Carter or David Mitchell without thinking of Calvino. Salman Rushdie is enthusiastic in his naming of Calvino as a major influence on his work, as am I. -- Jeanette Winterson

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Book SynopsisHarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics.

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Book SynopsisW.G. Sebald was born in Wertach im Allgäu, Germany in 1944. He studied German language and literature in Freiburg, Switzerland and Manchester. In 1966 he took up a position as an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester, and settled permanently in England in 1970. He was Professor of European Literature at the University of East Anglia, and the author of The Emigrants, which won a series of major awards, including the Berlin Literature Prize, the Heinrich Böll Prize, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Joseph Breitbach Prize; The Rings of Saturn, and Vertigo. W.G. Sebald wrote in his native tongue, German, and worked closely with his translator, Michael Hulse, to translate his work into English. He died in December 2001.Michael Hulse has translated Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther and Jacob Wasserman's Caspar Hauser, as well as the contemporary German authors Luise Rinser, Botho Strauss and Elfriede Jelinek. He is also an award-Trade ReviewA novel of ideas with a difference: it is nothing but ideas. Framed around the narrator's long walks in East Anglia, Sebald shows how one man looks aslant at historical atrocity. Formally dexterous, fearlessly written (why shouldn't an essay be a novel?), and unremittingly arcane; by the end I was in tears -- Teju Cole * Guardian *A great, strange and moving work * James Wood, Guardian *The finest book of long-distance mental travel that I've ever read * Jonathan Raban, Times Literary Supplement *A desperate intensity of feeling is thrillingly counterpoised by the workings of a wonderfully learned and rigorous mind * Sunday Times *Sebald is surely a major European author...he reaches the heights of epiphanic beauty only encountered normally in the likes of Proust * Independent on Sunday *

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Book SynopsisBorn in Manchester, Tim Parks grew up in London and studied at Cambridge and Harvard. In 1981 he moved to Italy where he has lived ever since. He is the author of novels, non-fiction and essays, including Europa, Cleaver, A Season with Verona and Teach Us to Sit Still. He has won the Somerset Maugham, Betty Trask and Llewellyn Rhys awards, and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He lectures on literary translation in Milan, writes for publications such as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, and his many translations from the Italian include works by Moravia, Calvino, Calasso, Tabucchi and Machiavelli.Trade ReviewAll Italy is here, its history, its character, its flaws * Sunday Times *A treat equivalent to a ride on the Orient Express * Wall Street Journal *Like the best train journeys, you don’t want it to end * New Statesman *A very funny hosanna to Italian railroad locomotion in all its rackety glory * Evening Standard, Books of the Year *Parks has the keenest of eyes for the telling of amusing detail ... He remains the best interpreter of Italian ways in Italy * Sunday Herald *Tim Parks has written a book about Italian railways that is engrossing, entertaining, and wonderfully revealing about the country and its people. It makes perfect armchair travelling – a delight from beginning to end -- David LodgeAll Italy is here, its history, its character, its flaws, and some of the things that Parks loves about the place * Sunday Times *The book is, as Tim Parks says, a search for the Italian character, which he evokes in dozens of gorgeously written scenes; but beyond that Parks is exploring the dynamic between tradition and innovation... Underneath everything, Parks is trying to come to a point of loving the world in all its confusion and frustration, and by the book's end he does, he does. Bravo -- David ShieldsThis latest peg on which to hang another ruminative book about the character of Italy provides Parks with a first-class ticket to ride as a lively, erudite raconteur in salty daily negotiation with what he calls a ‘dystopian paradise’ -- Iain Finlayson * The Times *With Paul Theroux apparently winding down, there might be an opening for Parks as a new laureate of international railways -- Andrew Martin * Observer *

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Book Synopsis''I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere. . . . I was trapped in my body, one that I barely recognized or understood, but at least I was safe.''New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as wildly undisciplined, Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she casts an insightful and critical eye on her childhood, teens, and twenties-including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life-and brings readers into the present and theTrade ReviewI have reviewed many interesting books for the TLS this year, but the most moving is Roxane Gay's Hunger . . . Her survivor's story is both understated and inspiring. * TLS, Books of the Year *I'm very thankful for Roxane Gay's Hunger, which should be and should have been on every award list if people were really reading. This is her best book, in my opinion. I love that it takes an unconventional road to storytelling and that the structure often spirals within itself in interesting ways. I also love that it is a story about sexual assault and the ways in which that can change your life. It's a deeply moving, somewhat experimental, gorgeously written and brilliantly thought-out memoir. And it's one of those books that no matter what your relationship to the body, this book is for you, all of you. * Porochista Khakpour, Buzzfeed *This whip-smart book takes on everything * Guardian Best Biography and Autobiography Books of 2017 *Luminous. . . . intellectually rigorous and deeply moving * The New York Times Book Review *

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Book SynopsisWith their powerful blend of political and aesthetic concerns, Edward W. Said's writings have transformed the field of literary studies. As in the title essay, the widely admired "Reflections on Exile," the fact of his own exile and the fate of the Palestinians have given both form and the force of intimacy to the questions Said has pursued. Taken together, these essays--from the famous to those that will surprise even Said's most assiduous followers--afford rare insight into the formation of a critic and the development of an intellectual vocation. Said's topics are many and diverse, from the movie heroics of Tarzan to the machismo of Ernest Hemingway to the shades of difference that divide Alexandria and Cairo. He offers major reconsiderations of writers and artists such as George Orwell, Giambattista Vico, Georg Lukacs, R. P. Blackmur, E. M. Cioran, Naguib Mahfouz, Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, Walter Lippman, Samuel Huntington, Antonio Gramsci, and Raymond Williams. Invigorating, edifying, acutely attentive to the vying pressures of personal and historical experience, his book is a source of immeasurable intellectual delight.

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Book SynopsisApril 2020: the country is deep in the first lockdown as a result of coronavirus. Young people are left rootless, without school or friends and isolated at home. In this enforced alienation a creative writing competition, ‘Generation Lockdown Writes’, was launched for young people from the ages of seven to 17. The only rule was that submissions to the competition had to provide an insight into what life was like for them in lockdown – to open up windows of homes and experiences across the UK. Some of Britain’s finest authors for young people stepped in to judge the ten individual categories, and the entries flooded in. ‘Generation Lockdown Writes’ is the stunning final collection of the winning entries, chosen from over six thousand entries. The beautiful and varied pieces provide a unique insight into what life was really like for young people during this historical moment across Britain. We enter many different worlds, and are given a remarkable insight into the range of emotions that young people felt. From moments of fear to joy, this is a collection of writing that will linger in the memory for a long time.Profits from the sale of this book will be donated to BookTrust.

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Book SynopsisWhen Ana Maria Caballero's young son is diagnosed with epilepsy, her family collides with the reality of illness, but also with Western medicine. A Petit Mal follows the narrative arc of this blunt collision, one that plunges its readers into multiple alternative methods of healing and the spiritual implications therein. Caballero's boldly innovative book unfolds as a page-turner, one whose topics are especially relevant to audiences interested in wellness, not as yet another banner, but as a committed, practical approach to life.

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Book SynopsisAuthor of the Booker-longlisted novel Second Place'Cements her reputation as one of the most fierce and elegant chroniclers of how we live now.' Stephanie Merritt, ObserverCoventry is a collection of essays about choices, womanhood and art.

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Book SynopsisIn the twenty-one poems of the Heroides, Ovid gave voice to the heroines and heroes of epic and myth. These deeply moving literary epistles reveal the happiness and torment of love, as the writers tell of their pain at separation, forgiveness of infidelity or anger at betrayal. The faithful Penelope wonders at the suspiciously long absence of Ulysses, while Dido bitterly reproaches Aeneas for too eagerly leaving her bed to follow his destiny, and Sappho—the only historical figure portrayed here—describes her passion for the cruelly rejecting Phaon. In the poetic letters between Paris and Helen the lovers seem oblivious to the tragedy prophesied for them, while in another exchange the youthful Leander asserts his foolhardy eagerness to risk his life to be with his beloved Hero.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a gTable of ContentsHeroidesIntroductionI: Penelope to UlyssesII: Phyllis to DemophoonIII: Briseis to AchillesIV: Phaedra to HippolytusV: Oenone to ParisVI: Hypsipyle to JasonVII: Dido to AeneasVIII: Hermione to OrestesIX: Deianira to HerculesX: Ariadne to TheseusXI: Canace to MacareusXII: Medea to JasonXIII: Laodamia to ProtesilausXIV: Hypermestra to LynceusXV: Sappho to PhaonXVI: Paris to HelenXVII: Helen to ParisXVIII: Leander to HeroXIX: Hero to LeanderXX: Acontius to CydippeXXI: Cydippe to AcontiusAppendix 1: Principal CharactersAppendix 2: Index of Names

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Book SynopsisMartha Gellhorn was one of the twentieth century's greatest war correspondents. The Face of War is a selection of her reports, on the conflicts in Spain, Finland, China and World War II, with later reports on Vietnam, Israel and Central America.Trade ReviewOne of the very greatest correspondents to cover the conflicts of this bloodies and most violent of centuries * Independent *

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Book SynopsisAn ardent steward of the land, fearless traveller and unrivalled observer of nature and culture, Barry Lopez died after a long illness on Christmas Day in 2020. The previous summer, a wildfire had consumed much of what was dear to him in his home and the community around it – a tragic reminder of the climate change of which he’d long warned. At once a cri de Coeur and a memoir of both pain and wonder, this remarkable collection of essays adds indelibly to Lopez’s legacy, and includes previously unpublished works, some written in the months before his death. They unspool memories, both personal and political, among them tender, sometimes painful stories of his childhood in New York and California, reports from expeditions to study animals and sea life, recollections of travels to Antarctica and other extraordinary places on earth, and mediations on finding oneself amid vast, dramatic landscapes. He reflects on those who taught him, including Indigenous elders and scientific mentors who sharpened his eye for the natural world. We witness poignant returns from his travels to the sanctuary of his Oregon backyard and in prose of searing candour, he reckons with the cycle of life, including own and – as he has done throughout his career – with the dangers the earth and its people are facing. With an introduction by Rebecca Solnit that speaks to Lopez’s keen attention to the world, including its spiritual dimensions, Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World opens our minds and sounds to the important of being wholly present to the beauty and complexity of life.Trade Review‘The world is vast, and so are the heart and the curiosity of Barry Lopez. His voice is incomparable and necessary.’ -- David Quammen

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Book SynopsisA transcendentalist classic on social responsibility and a manifesto that inspired modern protest movements  Critical of 19th-century America’s booming commercialism and industrialism, Henry David Thoreau moved to a small cabin in the woods of Concord, Massachusetts in 1845. Walden, the account of his stay near Walden Pond, conveys at once a naturalist’s wonder at the commonplace and a transcendentalist’s yearning for spiritual truth and self-reliance. But Thoreau's embrace of solitude and simplicity did not entail a withdrawal from social and political matters. Civil Disobedience, also included in this volume, expresses his antislavery and antiwar sentiments, and has influenced resistance movements worldwide. Both give rewarding insight into a free-minded, principled and idiosyncratic life.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,Table of ContentsWalden and Civil Disobedience - Henry David Thoreau Introduction by Michael MeyerSuggestions for Further ReadingA Note on the TextsWaldenEconomyWhere I Lived, and What I Lived ForReadingSoundsSolitudeVisitorsThe Bean-FieldThe VillageThe PondsBaker FarmHigher LawsBrute NeighborsHouse-WarmingFormer Inhabitants; and Winter VisitorsWinter AnimalsThe Pond in WinterSpringConclusion"Civil Disobedience"Notes for WaldenNotes for "Civil Disobedience"

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Book SynopsisFriedrich Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary thinkers in Western philosophy. Here he sets out his subversive views in a series of aphorisms on subjects ranging from art to arrogance, boredom to passion, science to vanity, rejecting conventional notions of morality to celebrate the individual's will to power'. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

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Book SynopsisMaggie Nelson is the author of several books of poetry and prose, including the New York Times bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award winner The Argonauts, and most recently in the UK, Bluets. She teaches at University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles.

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Book SynopsisLondon has the greatest literary tradition of any city in the world. Its roll-call of story-tellers includes cultural giants who changed the way the world thought about writing, like Shakespeare, Defoe and Dickens. But there has also been an innumerable host of writers who have sought to capture the essence of London and what it meant for the people who lived there or were merely passing through. They found a city of boundless wealth and ragged squalor, of moving tragedy and riotous joy; and they faithfully transcribed what they saw and felt in the stories they told of London town. They are stories of fact and fiction and occasionally something in between. Some voices will be familiar to many readers and others practically unknown. But all give us insights into these writers’ very varied Londons; and all tell their stories gratifyingly well.Authors include John Evelyn, Thomas de Quincey, W. M. Thackeray, Henry Mayhew, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, George Gissing, J. B. Priestley, Jean Rhys, Graham Greene, Muriel Spark, Maeve Binchy, Doris Lessing, Hanif Kureishi and Shena Mackay.

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Book SynopsisThe Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde is the only truly complete and authoritative single-volume edition of Oscar Wilde's works, and is available in both hardback and this paperback edition.Continuously in print since 1948, the Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde has long been recognised as the most comprehensive and authoritative single-volume collection of Wilde's texts available, containing his only novel, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, as well as his plays, stories, poems, essays and letters, all in their most authoritative texts.Illustrated with many fascinating photographs, the book includes introductions to each section by Merlin Holland (Oscar's grandson), Owen Dudley Edwards, Declan Kiberd and Terence Brown.Also included is a comprehensive bibliography of works by and about Oscar Wilde, and a chronological table of his life and work.

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Book SynopsisThese lectures were delivered by Seamus Heaney while he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford University. In the first of them, Heaney discusses and celebrates poetry''s special ability to redress spiritual balance and to function as a counterweight to hostile and oppressive forces in the world. He proceeds to explore how this ''redress'' manifests itself in a diverse range of poems and poets, including Christopher Marlowe''s ''Hero and Leander'', ''The Midnight Court'' by the eighteenth-century Irish poet Brian Merriman, John Clare''s vernacular writing and Oscar Wilde''s ''The Ballad of Reading Gaol''. Several twentieth-century poets are also discussed - W. B. Yeats, Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop and others - and the whole book constitutes a vivid proof of the claim that ''poetry is strong enough to help''.

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Book SynopsisOne of the greatest philosophers of the nineteenth century, Schopenhauer (1788-1860) believed that human action is determined not by reason but by ''will'' - the blind and irrational desire for physical existence. This selection of his writings on religion, ethics, politics, women, suicide, books and many other themes is taken from Schopenhauer''s last work, Parerga and Paralipomena, which he published in 1851. These pieces depict humanity as locked in a struggle beyond good and evil, and each individual absolutely free within a Godless world, in which art, morality and self-awareness are our only salvation. This innovative - and pessimistic - view has proved powerfully influential upon philosophy and art, directly affecting the work of Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Wagner among others.Arthur Schopenhauer was born in Danzig in 1788 where his family, of Dutch origin, owned a respected trading house. Arthur was expected to inherit the business, but hated the work and in 1807, after his father''s suicide and the sale of the business, he enrolled in the grammar school at Gotha. He went on to study medicine and science at Gottingen University and in 1810 began to study philosophy. In 1811 he transferred to Berlin to write his doctoral thesis, and began to write The World as Will and Idea, a complete exploration of his philosophy, which was finished in 1818. Although the book failed to sell, his belief in his own views sustained him through twenty-five years of frustrated desire for fame. During his middle life he travelled widely in Europe and in 1844 brought out a much expanded edition of his book, which after his death became one of the most widely read of all philosophical works. His fame was established in 1851 with the publication of Parerga and Paralipomena, a collection of dialogues, essays and aphorisms. He died in 1860.R.J. Hollingdale has translated works by, among others, Schopenhauer, Goethe, T.A. Hoffmann, Lichtenburg and Theodor Fontane, as well as eleven of Nietzsche''s books, many for the Penguin Classics. He has published two books on Nietzsche and was Honorary President of the British Nietzsche Society until his death in 2003.

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Book SynopsisA collection of previously unpublished letters from America's cult icon on the art of writing.Charles Bukowski was one of our most iconoclastic, raw and riveting writers, one whose stories, poems and novels have left an enduring mark on our culture. On Writing collects Bukowski's reflections and ruminations on the craft he dedicated his life to. Piercing, unsentimental and often hilarious, On Writing is filled not only with memorable lines but also with the author's trademark toughness, leavened with moments of grace, pathos and intimacy. In the previously unpublished letters to editors, friends and fellow writers collected here, Bukowski is brutally frank about the drudgery of work and uncompromising when it comes to the absurdities of life and of art.Trade ReviewA laureate of American low life * * Time * *The best poet in America -- Jean GenetHis was the hard-found music of the streets * * New York Times * *An American original * * Washington Post * *

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Book SynopsisLondon is often called the best place in the world to eat a city where a new landmark restaurant opens each day, where vertiginous towers, sprawling food halls and central neighbourhoods contain the cuisines of every country in the world. Yet, this London is not where Londoners usually eat. There is another version of London that exists in its marginal spaces, where food culture flourishes in parks and allotments, in warehouses and industrial estates, along rivers and A-roads, in baths and in libraries. A city where Londoners eat, sell, produce and distribute food every day without fanfare, where its food culture weaves in and out of daily urban existence.In a city of rising rents, of gentrification, and displacement, this new and updated edition ofLondon Feeds Itself, edited by the food writer and editor of Vittles, Jonathan Nunn, shows that the true centres of London food culture can be found in ever more creative uses of space, eked out by the people who make up the city. Its chapters explore the charged intersections between food and modern London's varied urban conditions, from markets and railway arches to places of worship to community centres. 26 essays about 26 different buildings, structures and public amenities in which London's vernacular food culture can be found, seen through the eyes of writers, architects, journalists and politicians all accompanied by over 125 guides to some of the city's best vernacular restaurants across all 33 London boroughs.Contributors: Carla Montemayor, Jenny Lau, Mike Wilson, Claudia Roden, Stephen Buranyi, Rebecca May Johnson, Owen Hatherley, Aditya Chakrabortty, Yvonne Maxwell, Melek Erdal, Sameh Asami, Barclay Bram, Ciaran Thapar, Santiago Peluffo Soneyra, Virginia Hartley, Jess Fagin, Leah Cowan, Ruby Tandoh, Jeremy Corbyn, Dee Woods, Shahed Saleem, Amardeep Singh Dhillon, Zarina Muhammad, Yemisi Aribisala, Nabil Al-Kinani, Sana Badri, Nikesh Shukla.

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Book SynopsisSelection includes The Portrait of Mr W.H., Wilde''s defence of Dorian Gray, reviews, and the writings from ''Intentions'' (1891): ''The Decay of Lying, ''Pen, Pencil, Poison'', and ''The Critic as Artist''.Wilde is familiar to us as the ironic critic behind the social comedies, as the creator of the beautiful and doomed Dorian Gray, as the flamboyant aesthete and the demonised homosexual. This volume presents us with a different Wilde. Wilde emerges here as a deep and serious reader of literature and philosophy, and an eloquent and original thinker about society and art.Table of ContentsThe Soul of Man under Socialism and Selected Critical ProseIntroductionNote on the TextsEight Reviews (1885-90)1. Mr. Whistler's Ten o'Clock2. The Relation of Dress to Art3. A Sentimental Journey through Literature4. Mr. Pater's Imaginary Portraits5. [The Actor as Critic]6. Poetical Socialists7. Mr. Swinburne's Last Volume8. Mr. Pater's Last VolumeThe Portrait of Mr. W. H. (expanded version 1889) In Defence of Dorian Gray (1890-91)The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)Intentions (1891)1. The Decay of Lying2. Pen, Pencil and Poison3. The Critic as Artist - Part IThe Critic as Artist - Part II4. The Truth of MasksNotesFurther Reading

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Book SynopsisIn The World of Sex, Henry Miller, one of the most scandalous writers of the 20th century explains his literary project Henry Miller''s bold, explicit novels scandalized readers and remade the literature of his day. In this uncompromising literary manifesto he argues that sex is at the heart of his writing because it is at the heart of life - a vital force as essential as bread, money, work or play. Drawing on his own experiences and on the writing of his famously banned novels in Paris, he shows sex as a mysterious realm that must be explored if we are to be truly free.

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Book SynopsisChristopher Hitchens's personally curated New York Times bestselling anthology of the most influential and important writings on atheism, including original pieces by Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan

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Book SynopsisFrom global literary superstar Karl Ove Knausgaard, an achingly beautiful collection of daily meditations and love letters addressed directly to Knausgaard’s unborn daughterIn Winter, we rejoin the great Karl Ove Knausgaard as the birth of his daughter draws near. In preparation for her arrival, he takes stock of the world, seeing it anew. While new life is on the horizon, the earth is also in hibernation, waiting for the warmer weather to return. In his inimitably sensitive style, he writes about everything from the moon, winter boots and messiness, to owls and birthdays. Taking nothing for granted, he fills these everyday familiar objects and ideas with new meaning. Startling, compassionate, and exquisitely beautiful, Knausgaard's writing is like nothing else. Somehow, he shows the world as it really is, at once mundane and sublime.Trade ReviewThe second volume of his autobiographical quartet based on the seasons is even more beautiful than the first... Hauntingly translated by Ingvild Burkey, Winter will reward every curious reader. Insightful, giddy and full of energy, Knausgaard's memoir throbs with the miraculous imminence of new life and the thrill of just being. * The Economist 1843 *When Knausgaard exposes himself in the manner of his autobiographical novel My Struggle... it’s interesting enough. But he becomes more charming and persuasive when he wanders into quizzical speculation – about, say, why coffins don’t have windows or how sex is like cannibalism. -- Anthony Cummins * Observer *The author casts the world in a holy glow of surprise and compassion… A winningly interior journey into the most interior of seasons. * Starred Kirkus review *It sounds mad, and often is, but it’s also sweet, funny and brimful of wide-eyed seasonal wonder. -- Anthony Cummins * Metro *

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Book SynopsisIn Junkspace (2001), architect Rem Koolhaas itemises in delirious detail how our cities are being overwhelmed. His celebrated jeremiad is here updated and twinned with Running Room, a fresh response from architectural critic Hal Foster. 'The manifesto is a modernist mode, one that looks to the future… Junkspace makes no such claim: “Architecture disappeared in the twentieth century,” states Koolhaas matter-of-factly. Junkspace does a harder thing: it “foretells” the present, which is to say that it calls on us to recognize what is already everywhere around us.’ Hal FosterTrade ReviewJunkspace is the most important piece of writing on architecture of the 21st Century. The stream of Koolhaas’s prose is akin to a visionary dream, a structureless sequence of crystalline insight and enfolding opiate fog. . . It is distinctly literary, and there are moments of outright genius. —Icon Foster responds to Koolhaas with an argument for autonomy—both disciplinary (from one art to the next) and (by implication) personal—in order to find space (or the running room of the title) within the junk in which Koolhaas suggests we have drowned. And whether you are at an airport an art fair, that’s something we all need. —Art Review Rem Koolhaas’s luminescent essay Junkspace decries the mall as the slagheap of America...Koolhaas illuminates the dark underbelly of the kind of advanced capitalism living in the mall. —Columbia Review Magazine

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Book SynopsisFrom New York Times bestselling author Naomi Wolf, Facing the Beast is a devastating, detailed account of wrongthink, deplatforming, and an unexpected political, personal, and spiritual transformation that followed during one of the most divisive times in American history. In this uncompromising investigation into today’s most urgent issues, Naomi Wolf uses her own wildly politicized pilgrimage—from New York Times bestselling author and high-level Democratic consultant to a journalist cast out from the elite political and social circles she once moved through—as a stunning narrative framework that is both chilling and incisive. Wolf’s sin? Doing the job that good journalists once prided themselves on: asking questions, challenging authority, and, during one of the most politically divisive moments in modern history, exposing the many failures of the public health response during the COVID-19 pandemic by chronicling the dangerous descent of our democracy into tyranny, censorship, and totalitarianism. Unable to remain silent in the shadows and unwilling to collude with the mainstream, Wolf bravely covers topics that few other writers dare to address critically for fear of being deplatformed. Facing the Beast explores reproductive rights, medical freedom, the uncurious thought-policing of the “progressive” left, the Second Amendment, the criminal relationship between the FDA and Pfizer—Wolf’s clear writing repeatedly shines light in the dark corners of our fractured society. A decades-long champion of free speech, freedom of the press, and the Constitution, Wolf found herself not only in the midst of a political rebirth but a spiritual transformation as well—one in which the events of the day could only be described in terms of good, evil, and a metaphysical quest on the nature of reality. For readers of Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, and Bari Weiss, Facing the Beast is a fearless indictment of legacy media and the political class, as well as a brutal reminder that searching for and defending the truth can be dangerous. “Naomi Wolf is one of the bravest, clearest-thinking people I know. The reason you hear the forces of repression so desperately trying to dismiss her is because she is right.”—Tucker CarlsonTrade Review“When Western leaders abandoned reason and embraced the ideology of force several years ago, Naomi Wolf was one of few who understood instantly what was happening. She decided to tell the full truth about it all the time, no matter what. The result has been a thrilling inspiration to those of us who’ve followed it, and for the first time is collected here in one place. Read Facing the Beast to understand what bravery looks like.”—Tucker Carlson“In the crisis of our lives and of everything we call civilization, Naomi Wolf has been a prescient observer, a keen analyst, and brave fighter for truth and freedom. Everything in her life and career prepared her for this moment. We all owe her a debt of gratitude for what she has done and continues to do for the great cause. Like her last book, Facing the Beast stands as a testament to truth in times gone mad.”—Jeffrey Tucker, president, Brownstone Institute“Today’s world has been constructed to divide us. Naomi Wolf has seen through the lies and deception. In her personal journey, described in Facing the Beast, she unequivocally came to understand the universal principle—that all of humanity is connected. Dr. Wolf fights for our God-given rights and freedoms. I am honored to call her friend.”—Edward Dowd, author of Cause Unknown

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Book SynopsisThe greatest Indian epic, one of the world''s supreme masterpieces of storytellingA Penguin Classic A sweeping tale of abduction, battle, and courtship played out in a universe of deities and demons, The Ramayana is familiar to virtually every Indian. Although the Sanskrit original was composed by Valmiki around the fourth century BC, poets have produced countless versions in different languages. Here, drawing on the work of an eleventh-century poet called Kamban, Narayan employs the skills of a master novelist to re-create the excitement he found in the original. A luminous saga made accessible to new generations of readers, The Ramayana can be enjoyed for its spiritual wisdom, or as a thrilling tale of ancient conflict.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works thro

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Book SynopsisA pocket is formed when two or more people come together in agreement. The resistance is against the inhumanity of the new world economic order. This work features essays about - Rembrandt, Palaeolithic cave painters, a Romanian peasant, ancient Egyptians, an expert in the loneliness of certain hotel bedrooms, and a man in a radio station.Trade Review"John Berger writes: 'The pocket in question is a small pocket of resistance. A pocket is formed when two or more people come together in agreement. The resistance is against the inhumanity of the new world economic order. The people coming together are the reader, me and those the essays are about - Rembrandt, Palaeolithic cave painters, a Romanian peasant, ancient Egyptians, an expert in the loneliness of certain hotel bedrooms, dogs at dusk, a man in a radio station. And unexpectedly, our exchanges strengthen each of us in our conviction that what is happening to the world today is wrong, and that what is often said about it is a lie. I've never written a book with a greater sense of urgency.'

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Book SynopsisIn this extraordinary essay, Virginia Woolf examines the limitations of womanhood in the early twentieth century. With the startling prose and poetic licence of a novelist, she makes a bid for freedom, emphasizing that the lack of an independent income, and the titular ‘room of one’s own’, prevents most women from reaching their full literary potential. As relevant in its insight and indignation today as it was when first delivered in those hallowed lecture theatres, A Room of One’s Own remains both a beautiful work of literature and an incisive analysis of women and their place in the world.Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition of A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf features an afterword by the British art historian Frances Spalding.

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Book SynopsisFor four centuries, Logavina Street was a quiet residential road in a city known for its ethnic tolerance and cosmopolitan charm. Muslims, Christians, Serbs and Croats lived easily together, sharing an identity as Bosnians. Then the war tore their lives apart. Often without heat, water, food or electricity, they evaded daily sniper fire and witnessed horrific deaths. Neighbours and friends turned into deadly enemies. In this intimate eyewitness account, Barbara Demick weaves together the stories of ten families from Logavina Street, brilliantly illuminating one of the pivotal events of the twentieth century, and describes how, twenty years later, they are coping with the war's consequences. .

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