Essays

Prize-winning poet Ruth Padel is renowned as a guide to understanding today's poetry. Her much-loved 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem introduced the contemporary poetry scene and discussed individual poems. Her new book, invaluable for all who want to write...

'A problem of space first of all, then a problem of order'One of the most singular and extravagant imaginations of the twentieth century, the novelist and essayist Georges Perec was a true original who delighted in wordplay, puzzles, taxonomies and...

An extraordinary collection of thematically linked essays, including THE UNCANNY, SCREEN MEMORIES and FAMILY ROMANCES.Leonardo da Vinci fascinated Freud primarily because he was keen to know why his personality was so incomprehensible to his...

Spurious composition.Cicero (Marcus Tullius, 106-43 BC), Roman lawyer, orator, politician and philosopher, of whom we know more than of any other Roman, lived through the stirring era that saw the rise, dictatorship, and...

Across the world, universities are more numerous than they have ever been, yet at the same time there is unprecedented confusion about their purpose and scepticism about their value. What Are Universities For? offers a spirited and compelling argument...

A collection of some of Freud's most famous essays, including ON THE INTRODUCTION OF NARCISSISM; REMEMBERING, REPEATING AND WORKING THROUGH; BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE; THE EGO AND THE ID and INHIBITION, SYMPTOM AND FEAR.About the AuthorSigmund Freud...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.AwardsWinner of The Strega Prize 1963.Book InformationISBN 9781911547143Author Natalia GinzburgFormat PaperbackPage Count 134Imprint Daunt BooksPublisher Daunt Books

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER - A SUNDAY TIMES FILM & TV BOOK OF THE YEAR'Razor-sharp and as funny as I May Destroy You ... A gifted writer' Sunday Times | 'A remarkable talent' Guardian | 'A perfect truth-teller of our time' ELLE | 'Leaps off the...

Jorge Luis Borges's Labyrinths is a collection of short stories and essays showcasing one of Latin America's most influential and imaginative writers. This Penguin Modern Classics edition is edited by Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby, with an...

'The ultimate Camp statement: it's good because it's awful.'These two classic essays were the first works of criticism to break down the boundaries between 'high' and 'low' culture, and made Susan Sontag a literary sensation.Penguin Modern: fifty new...

Already a bestseller, this is a wonderfully entertaining collection of Alan Bennett's prose writings. Writing Home brings together diaries, reminiscences and reviews to give us a unique and unforgettable portrait of one of England's leading playwrights...

'Our greatest living satirist' Sunday Times 'The most screamingly funny living writer' Mail on Sunday From the bestselling and award-winning author of Ma'am Darling and One Two Three Four, a selection of Craig...

With fascinating essays on artists from Louis Armstrong to Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud to Franz Kafka and Beatrix Potter to Marcel Proust, Cultural Amnesia is one of the crowning achievements in Clive James's illustrious career as a critic.'One...

The Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, also called the Age of Reason, was so named for an intellectual movement that shook the foundations of Western civilization. In championing radical ideas such as individual liberty and an empirical appraisal...

'A masterful, must-read contribution to conversations on power, justice, healing, and devotion from a singular voice I now trust with my whole heart'GLENNON DOYLE, author of Untamed**Roxane Gay's Book Club March 2023 Pick**When Lamya is fourteen, she...

In 1786, when he was already the acknowledged leader of the Sturm und Drang literary movement, Goethe set out on a journey to Italy to fulfil a personal and artistic quest and to find relief from his responsibilities and the agonies of unrequited love...

In 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,...

'The most prescient of British public intellectuals' Pankaj Mishra, Financial TimesUpdated with a new foreword and two new chapters of John Gray's writing.Why is progress a pernicious myth? Why do beliefs that humanity can be improved end in farce or...

The subjects of this stylish and audacious collection of essays range from an assault in Nicaragua to a Morgellons meeting; from Frida Kahlo's plaster casts to a gangland tour of LA. Jamison is interested in how we tell stories about injury and pain, and...

This major collection demonstrates the extent to which Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was an inspiration to the Americans in their struggle for independence, a passionate supporter of the French Revolution and perhaps the outstanding English radical writer of...

A powerful meditation on ageing and familial love, I Remain in Darkness recounts Annie Ernaux's attempts to help her mother recover from Alzheimer's disease, and then, when that proves futile, to bear witness to the older woman's gradual decline and her...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780679601050Author Albert EinsteinFormat HardbackPage Count 448Imprint Modern Library IncPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams) 454gDimensions(mm)...

A philosophical exploration of the idea of 'rebellion' by one of the leading existentialist thinkers, Albert Camus' The Rebel looks at artistic and political rebels throughout history, from Epicurus to the Marquis de Sade. This Penguin Modern Classics...

A witty account of Waugh's time in Abyssinia as a war correspondentIn 1935 Italy declared war on Abyssinia and Evelyn Waugh was sent to Addis Ababa to cover the conflict. His acerbic account of the intrigue and political machinations leading up to the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780062688811Author Nicole SealeyFormat PaperbackPage Count 96Imprint ECCO PressPublisher HarperCollins Publishers Inc

"...his stories are always interesting, lively and well written, giving an insight to the art world as he experienced it." - Literary Review "If you read one book on art this year, it must be this brilliant critique of art today seen through the lens of...

Twenty years, a thousand pages, and now a single beautiful edition of Arundhati Roy's complete non-fiction.'Arundhati Roy is one of the most confident and original thinkers of our time' Naomi Klein 'The world has never had to face such global confusion...

Life Honestly is a complete guide to modern life from some of today's most talented and insightful writers including Bryony Gordon, Dolly Alderton, Natasha Devon, Lauren Laverne and Yomi Adegoke.Within these pages you'll find an un-airbrushed selection...

An enlightening collection of essays, reviews and speeches by 'one of the greatest writers of our era' (Hilary Mantel) and 'the Irish novelist everyone should read' (Colm Toibin).'Wise and compelling ... Elegiac and graceful.' David Mitchell'I have...

Written by a Greek traveller in the second century ad for a principally Roman audience, Pausanias' Guide to Greece is a comprehensive, extraordinarily literate and well-informed guidebook for tourists of the age. Concentrating on buildings, tombs and...

Joe Brainard's I Remember is a cult classic, envied and admired by writers from Frank O'Hara to John Ashbery and Edmund White. As autobiography, Brainard's method was brilliantly simple: to set down specific memories as they rose to the surface of his...

'Gavin Maxwell's trilogy is essential reading' Sunday HeraldFifty years ago Gavin Maxwell went to live in an abandoned house on a shingle beach on the west coast of Scotland. A haven for wildlife - he named his home Camusfearna and settled there with the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780714548609Author Tristan TzaraFormat PaperbackPage Count 128Imprint Calder Publications LtdPublisher Alma Books Ltd

Written in the second century AD by a Greek traveller for a predominantly Roman audience, Pausanias' Guide to Greece is an extraordinarily literate and well-informed guidebook. A study of buildings, traditions and myth, it describes with precision and...

It might be thought the height of poor taste to ascribe good fortune to a healthy man with a young family struck down at the age of sixty by an incurable degenerative disorder from which he must shortly die. But there is more than one sort of luck.In...

'Joins the dots in a neglected narrative of female scientists, visionaries and code-breakers' ObserverHow is artificial intelligence changing the way we live and love? Now with a new chapter, this is the eye-opening new book from Sunday Times bestselling...

A Sunday Times BestsellerChristopher Hitchens (1949-2011) was a matchless writer, debater and humanist. Throughout his life he shone the light of reason and truth into the eyes of charlatans and hucksters, exposing falsehood and decrying hypocrisy...

'Will Self may not be the last modernist at work but at the moment he's the most fascinating of the tradition's torch bearers.' New YorkFrom one of the most unusual and distinctive writers working today, dubbed 'the most daring and delightful novelist of...

Writing seems to be a problem of some kind. It isn't as if most people can just sit down and start to write brilliantly, get up from the desk, so something else all day, and then, next morning start again without any conflict or anxiety. To begin to...

The 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...