Essays

Reality versus fiction is at the heart of the current literary debate. We live in a world of docu-drama, the 'real life' story. Works of art, novels, films, are frequently bolstered by reference to the autobiography of the creator, or to underlying 'fact...

George 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...

In this selection from over twenty years of reporting and writing, Ian Jack sets out to deal with contemporary Britain - from national disasters to football matches to obesity - but is always drawn back in time, vexed by the question of what came first...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780861713943Author John Daido LooriFormat PaperbackPage Count 256Imprint Wisdom Publications,U.S.Publisher Wisdom Publications,U.S.

Both Flesh and Not combines David Foster Wallace's best-loved essays with work never before published in the UK.Beloved for his brilliantly discerning eye, his verbal elasticity and his uniquely generous imagination, David Foster Wallace was heralded by...

A gathering of artful essays by one of Poland's most translated post-war writers is here brought to a new audience. Poet and essayist Zbigniew Herbert takes an intriguing look at the cultural, artistic, and aesthetic legacy of 17th-century Holland. These...

The private correspondence of Rome's most prolific public figure. To his dear friend Atticus, Cicero reveals himself as to no other of his correspondents except perhaps his brother. In Cicero's Letters to Atticus we get an intimate look at his...

'Every essay in this book is magnificent... Mesmerizing.' New York Times'How we interact with animals has preoccupied philosophers, poets, and naturalists for ages,' writes Susan Orlean. Since the age of six, when Orlean wrote and illustrated a book...

'Every essay in this book is magnificent... Mesmerizing.' New York Times'How we interact with animals has preoccupied philosophers, poets, and naturalists for ages,' writes Susan Orlean. Since the age of six, when Orlean wrote and illustrated a book...

'Consider just this, and give your minds to this alone: whether or not what I say is just' Plato's account of Socrates' trial and death (399 BC) is a significant moment in Classical literature and the life of Classical Athens. In these four dialogues,...

'We live within a spectacle of empty clothes and unworn masks'In this series of remarkable pieces from across his career, John Berger celebrates and dissects the close links between art and society and the individual. Few writers give a more vivid and...

ONE OF LIT HUB'S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2023 * ESQUIRE's August 2023 Book Club Pick"If books are important to you because you're a reader or a writer, then how books are sold should be important to you as well. If it matters to you that your...

Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer Viet Thanh Nguyen called on 17 fellow refugee writers from across the globe to shed light on their experiences, and the result is The Displaced, a powerful dispatch from the individual lives behind current...

An instant New York Times bestseller, I'll Show Myself Out is the eagerly anticipated second essay collection from Jessi Klein, author of the acclaimed debut You'll Grow Out of It.Longlisted for the PEN Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the...

Set on a Bengali noble's estate in 1908, this is both a love story and a novel of political awakening. The central character, Bimala, is torn between the duties owed to her husband, Nikhil, and the demands made on her by the radical leader, Sandip. Her...

Through a close reading of the lives and works of some of the greatest intellectuals of recent times, Adam Shatz asks: do writers have an ethical imperative to question injustice? How can one remain a dispassionate thinker when involved in the cut and...

This volume contains a generous selection from the essays Johnson published twice weekly as 'The Rambler' in the early 1750s. It was here that he first created the literary character and forged the distinctive prose style that established him as a public...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781681370583Author Walter BenjaminFormat PaperbackPage Count 136Imprint NYRB ClassicsPublisher The New York Review of Books, Inc

'The professor, the critic and the novelist work in harmony to provide a valuable tutorial on modern fiction' ObserverHow does the novel represent human consciousness on the page?In eleven sparkling essays on some of the great novelists of the last 200...

In 1935 Rose Macaulay (1881-1958) was a well-established novelist, reviewer, columnist and feminist wit. She was part of the 'intellectual aristocracy' of England, but was also passionately interested in everyday life and its foolishnesses. Personal...

Meditative missives.Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, born at Corduba (Cordova) ca. 4 BC, of a prominent and wealthy family, spent an ailing childhood and youth at Rome in an aunt's care. He became famous in rhetoric, philosophy, money-making, and imperial ...

In his first book of nonfiction, Benjamin Percy challenges the notion that literary and genre fiction are mutually exclusive. In fifteen essays on the craft of fiction, Percy looks to disparate sources to discover how contemporary writers engage issues...

Winter takes us on an intimate tour of the artists, poets, composers, writers, explorers, scientists and thinkers who helped shape a new and modern idea of winter. We learn how literature heralds the arrival of the middle class; how snow science leads to...

Borges takes us on a startling, idiosyncratic, fresh, and highly opinionated tour of English literature, weaving together countless cultural traditions of the last three thousand years. Borges's lectures - delivered extempore by a man of extraordinary...

'Between a bottle of Epsom salts or one of twenty-year-old cognac, which would you choose? Would you rather spend your vacation with an eighty-year old leper or with Demi Moore? Do you prefer being sprinkled with ferocious red ants or sharing a...

'Between a bottle of Epsom salts or one of twenty-year-old cognac, which would you choose? Would you rather spend your vacation with an eighty-year old leper or with Demi Moore? Do you prefer being sprinkled with ferocious red ants or sharing a...

This authoritative edition was originally published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique selection from the full range of Swift's fifty-year career - prose, poetry, and letters...

The most comprehensive one-volume collection of Goethe's writings ever published in EnglishThe Essential Goethe is the most comprehensive and representative one-volume collection of Goethe's writings ever published in English. It provides...

'The extraordinary writers in this volume articulate the taste, the terror, and the dialect of war; they command their powers of description to face a shameless empire intent on annihilating them' Ellena SavageA selection of Ukraine's leading writers...

`The person who loves the addict exhausts and renews their love on a daily basis' In this vivid and powerful collection of essays, the first non- fiction book published by Tramp Press, Emilie Pine boldly confronts the past to better understand herself,...

Hilarious and trenchant, Reliable Essays collects the most memorable works of criticism and travel writing from well-loved author and broadcaster, Clive James. With an introduction by Julian Barnes.'[An] intellectual as well as a joker, a wise man as...

A collection of John Carey's greatest, wisest, and wittiest reviews-amassed over a lifetime of writing In 1977, newly installed as a professor of English at Oxford, John Carey took the position of chief reviewer for the Sunday Times. In a career...

A unique history of the Beats, in the words of the movement's most central member, Allen Ginsberg, based on a seminal series of his lecturesIn 1977, twenty years after the publication of his landmark poem 'Howl', Allen Ginsberg decided it was time to...

In February 1822 the writer and adventurer Edward John Trelawny arrived in Pisa to make the acquaintance of his heroes Shelley and Byron, leaving a broken marriage and an exotic seafaring career behind him. He became a close companion to them and their...

A Whore's Profession brings together, for the first time, David Mamet's acclaimed volumes of notes and essays, including, The Cabin, Writing in Restaurants, Some Freaks and On Directing Film. Poignant, intimate, insightful and witty by turns, these...

What is it we want when we can't stop wanting? And how do we make that hunger productive and vital rather than corrosive and destructive? These are the questions that animate Christian Wiman as he explores the relationships between art and faith, death...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781912430338Author Ann SandhamFormat PaperbackImprint Aurora Metro BooksPublisher Aurora Metro Publications

In this frank, playful and typically unorthodox collection of essays, Alasdair Gray tells how his early life experiences influenced his writing, including the creation of those landmarks of literature, Lanark and 1982, Janine. He details the inspirations...

One of the major political figures of his time, Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) served in the court of Elizabeth I and ultimately became Lord Chancellor under James I in 1617. A scholar, wit, lawyer and statesman, he wrote widely on politics, philosophy...

A young woman spends a month taking the waters at a thermal water-based rehabilitation facility in Budapest. On her return to London, she attempts to continue her recovery using an 80 pound inflatable blue bathtub. The tub becomes a metaphor for the...