Essays

Borges' first collection of stories (1935). In his writing, Borges always combined high seriousness with a wicked sense of fun. Here he reveals his delight in re-creating (or making up) colorful stories from the Orient, the Islamic world, and the Wild...

The Salmon of Doubt is Douglas Adams's indispensable guide to life, the universe and everything. It includes short stories and eleven chapters of a Dirk Gently novel that Douglas Adams was working on at the time of his death, and features an introduction...

Pliny's Natural History is an astonishingly ambitious work that ranges from astronomy to art and from geography to zoology. Mingling acute observation with often wild speculation, it offers a fascinating view of the world as it was understood in the...

Two weeks before his death, Oliver Sacks outlined the contents of The River of Consciousness, the last book he would oversee . . .The bestselling author of On the Move, Musicophilia, and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Sacks is known for his...

An extraordinary memoir of anticipatory grief, seventy-two minutes of life and a silent maternity leave, from artist and academic Tamarin Norwood. A few months into pregnancy, Tamarin Norwood learned that the baby she was carrying would not live. Over...

It's Not About the Burqa is an anthology of frank and insightful essays by Muslim women about the contemporary Muslim female experience.'Passionate, angry, self-effacing, nuanced and utterly compelling in every single way' - Nikesh Shukla, editor of The...

No other edition accurately represents the actual (and likely authorial) divisions of the text as attested to by its two surviving witnesses-Caxton's 1485 print and, especially, the famous Winchester Manuscript. The Winchester Manuscript is now generally...

'Intensely moving, vital and artful' - Guardian'A dizzying ride . . . both timely and beguiling' - Sunday TimesFrom the award-winning author of Crudo, this is an exhilarating and eminently readable study of the long struggle for bodily freedom - from gay...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781910263013Author Mollie Panter-DownesFormat PaperbackPage Count 480Imprint Persephone Books LtdPublisher Persephone Books LtdWeight(grams)...

Poet, pattern-designer, environmentalist and maker of fine books, William Morris (1834-96) was also a committed socialist and visionary writer, obsessively concerned with the struggle to achieve a perfect society on earth. News From Nowhere, one of the...

The first essay collection from one of the most acclaimed writers of our time. 'This trenchant, unrepentant collection reminds you that she's a brilliant writer... Order a copy in case she's cancelled by Christmas' THE TIMES...

It's early morning and there's a whole new day ahead. How will it unfold? The baby will feed, hopefully she'll sleep; Helen looks out of the window. The Long Form is the story of two people composing a day together. It is a day of movements and...

In this profound and moving philosophical statement, Camus poses the fundamental question: If human existence has no meaning, is life worth living?'What I touch, what resists me - that is what I understand'As Camus argues, if there is no God to give...

**QUIETLY HOSTILE - THE HILARIOUS NEW BOOK FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR - IS AVAILABE TO PRE-ORDER NOW**ONE OF STYLIST'S BEST NEW BOOKS FOR 2020'This is an unforgettable book.' Roxane Gay Meditations on the terror of love; tips for...

Warm, entertaining, and above all thought-provoking, Daemon Voices provides a remarkable insight into the mind of one of our greatest writers. He explains which storytellers have meant the most to him, including William Blake and John Milton, why their...

A stunning collection of essays and memoir from twice Booker Prize winner and international bestseller Hilary Mantel, author of The Mirror and the Light In 1987, when Hilary Mantel was first published in the London...

'Sebald is the Joyce of the 21st Century' The TimesWhat begins as the record of W. G. Sebald's own journey on foot through coastal East Anglia, from Lowestoft to Bungay, becomes the conductor of evocations of people and cultures past and present. From...

Repackaged to feature Tolkien's own painting of the Tree of Amalion, this collection includes his famous essay, 'On Fairy-stories' and the story that exemplifies this, 'Leaf by Niggle', together with the poem 'Mythopoeia' and the verse...

In this brilliant debut, winner of the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, Polly Barton reflects on her experience of moving to the Japanese island of Sado at the age of twenty-one and on her journey to becoming a literary translator. Written in...

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERAs Heard on NPR's This American Life'The delights he extols here (music, laughter, generosity, poetry, lots of nature) are bulwarks against casual cruelties . . . contagious in their joy' New York TimesThe winner of the NBCC...

In The Book of the Courtier (1528), Baldesar Castiglione, a diplomat and Papal Nuncio to Rome, sets out to define the essential virtues for those at Court. In a lively series of imaginary conversations between the real-life courtiers to the Duke of...

'A landmark of feminist thought and a rhetorical masterpiece' GuardianRanging from the silent fate of Shakespeare's gifted imaginary sister to Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and the effects of poverty and sexual constraint on female creativity, A Room of...

The essential book on how not to be a doctor - and how to be a better one. Drawn from his popular medical columns over the years, John Launer shares fifty of his best-loved essays, covering topics from essentials skills they don't teach you in medical...

New essays by the Orange and Pulitzer Prize winning author of Gilead, Home and Lila. In this collection, Marilynne Robinson, one of today's most important thinkers - admired by President Obama, and so many others - impels us to action and offers us hope...

'It is a most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, book spread before you, and commune with someone from the past whom you have never met...'Moonlight, sake, spring blossom, idle moments, a woman's hair - these exquisite reflections on life's...

Long Description ILL FEELINGS is a collective biography of medically unexplained illness. Structured around the narrative of their own ill feelings, Alice Hattrick uncovers their and their mother's case histories, and branches out into the records of ill...

Amid the corruption and power struggles of the collapse of the Roman Republic, Cicero (106-43BC) produced some of the most stirring and eloquent speeches in history. A statesman and lawyer, he was one of the only outsiders to penetrate the aristocratic...

A brilliantly varied new selection of D. H. Lawrence's essays, chosen and introduced by Geoff DyerFor D. H. Lawrence the novel was the pinnacle, 'the one bright book of life', yet his non-fiction shows him at his most freewheeling and playful. This is a...

Can ballet ever be reconciled with feminist ideals? 'Beautiful, difficult, and compelling.' VANITY FAIR 'Don't think, dear,' said Balanchine. 'Just do.' For centuries, being a ballerina has been synonymous with being beautiful, thin, obedient...

The Essential Essays gathers twenty-five of Adrienne Rich's most renowned essays, demonstrating the lasting brilliance of her voice and her prophetic vision. Her thoughts on feminism, poetry, race, homosexuality and identity are still powerful and...

'I will write to avenge my people.' It was as a young woman that Annie Ernaux first wrote these words in her diary, giving a name to her purpose in life as a writer. She returns to them in her stirring defence of literature and of political writing in...

From the bestselling author of UNDERLAND, THE OLD WAYS and THE LOST WORDS - an essay on the joy of reading, for anyone who has ever loved a bookEvery book is a kind of gift to its reader, and the act of giving books is charged with a special emotional...

Terry Pratchett in his own wordsWith a foreword by Neil GaimanTerry Pratchett earned a place in the hearts of readers the world over with his bestselling Discworld series - but in recent years he became equally well-known as an outspoken campaigner for...

As the Amazon burns, Fabio Zuker shares stories of resistance, self-determination, and kinship with the land. In 2007, a seven-ton minke whale was found stranded on the banks of the Tapajos River, hundreds of miles into the Amazon rainforest. For...

A BRACINGLY ORIGINAL, BOUNDARY BREAKING EXPLORATION OF COOKING AND THE KITCHEN, FROM A RISING STAR IN FOOD WRITING 'A manifesto for reclaiming cooking as an intellectual... a brave, honest book' SUNDAY TIMES 'An intense thought-provoking enquiry...

The full German text of Durrenmatt's play is accompanied by German-English vocabulary. Notes and a detailed introduction in English put the work in its social and historical context.About the AuthorFriedrich Durrenmatt, P.K.AckermannBook InformationISBN...

EDITED BY JOANNE TRAUTMANN BANKS, WITH A PREFACE BY HERMIONE LEEThe finest and most enjoyable of Virginia Woolf's letters are brought together in a single volume. It is a marvellous collection - spontaneous, witty, often flirtatious and powerfully moving...

Creative nonfiction, also known as narrative nonfiction, liberated journalism by inviting writers to dramatize, interpret, speculate, and even re-create their subjects. Lee Gutkind collects twenty-five essays that flourished in this new turf, all...

Morris's intimate journals, written for a friend, unconsciously explore questions of travel, noting his reaction to the idea of leaving or arriving, to hurry and delay, what it means to dread a place you've never been to or to encounter the actuality of...

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-SmithCelebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they...