Literary Figures

Journeying from Glasgow to Lagos and beyond, Red Dust Road is a heart-stopping memoir, a story of parents and siblings, friends and strangers, belonging and beliefs, biology and destiny.With an introduction by the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola...

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature'Engaging, brilliant' Guardian'A talkative, tender meditation' Financial Times'Every novelist will want to read this' Daily TelegraphWhat happens within us when we read a novel? And how does a writer create its...

Ian Rankin's guide to the places in Scotland that have provided inspiration for his bestselling Inspector Rebus novels.'A must-have for all Rebus fans' DAILY EXPRESS'His novels are playing a significant part in redefining Scotland's image of itself in...

'Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.' Waugh begins his story with heredity, writing of the energetic, literary and sometimes eccentric men and women who, unknown to themselves,...

Written between August and December 1938, Autumn Journal is still considered one of the most valuable and moving testaments of living through the thirties by a young writer. It is a record of the author's emotional and intellectual experience during...

Had there been no Great War, there would have been no Hobbit, no Lord of the Rings, no Narnia, and perhaps no conversion to Christianity by C. S. Lewis.The First World War laid waste to a continent and brought about the end of innocence-and the end of...

In an age of emails, tweets and emojis, this beautiful selection of original love letters invites us into a privileged realm and reminds us why the written word is so expressive and revealing. The 30 handwritten notes included in this book span...

The recent Narnia films have inspired a resurgence of interest in C. S. Lewis, the Oxford academic, popular theologian and, most famously, creator of the magical world of Narnia - and this authoritative new biography, published to mark the 50th...

A memoir of politics and activism, from the bestselling and beloved author of I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS'A brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal woman' BARACK OBAMAIt is 1964 and Maya Angelou is on her way back home, leaving...

The first book in V. S. Naipaul's acclaimed Indian trilogy - with a preface by the author. An Area of Darkness is V. S. Naipaul's semi-autobiographical account - at once painful and hilarious, but always thoughtful and considered - of his first visit to...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780805209068Author Franz KafkaFormat PaperbackPage Count 528Imprint Schocken BooksPublisher Schocken BooksWeight(grams) 414gDimensions(mm) 203mm * 131mm *...

Inspired Traveller's Guides: Literary Places takes you on an enlightening journey through the key locations of literature's best and brightest authors, movements and moments - brought to life through comprehensively researched text and stunning...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780984004386Author David BurkeFormat PaperbackPage Count 258Imprint Paris Writers PressPublisher Paris Writers PressWeight(grams) 449gDimensions(mm) 235mm *...

A Washington Post Most Notable Nonfiction Book of the Year"Delicious and infuriating . . . unputdownable."-Sadie Stein, The New York Times"A tour de force. . . . The stories are gripping, horrific and sometimes funny, but most important of all they are...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781611807424Author David HintonFormat PaperbackPage Count 160Imprint Shambhala Publications IncPublisher Shambhala Publications Inc

Born in Poland in 1857, Joseph Conrad is one of the great writers of the twentieth century. This book traces Conrad's life from his childhood in a Russian penal colony, through his early manhood in Marseille and his years in the British Merchant Navy, to...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780140100181Author Jim CarrollFormat PaperbackPage Count 224Imprint Penguin USAPublisher Penguin Putnam IncWeight(grams) 170gDimensions(mm) 196mm * 127mm *...

Over the last seven years Etgar Keret has had plenty of reasons to worry. His son, Lev, was born in the middle of a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. His father became ill. And he has been constantly tormented by nightmarish visions of the Iranian president...

'Captures both Barbara and her writing so miraculously' JILLY COOPER Picked as a Book to Look Forward to in 2021 by the Guardian, The Times and the Observer A Radio 4 Book of the Week, April...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781561649624Author Carlene BrennenFormat PaperbackPage Count 224Imprint Pineapple Press Inc.,U.S.Publisher Rowman & LittlefieldWeight(grams)...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781594204609Author Gertrude SteinFormat HardbackPage Count 320Imprint The Penguin PressPublisher Penguin Putnam IncWeight(grams) 970gDimensions(mm) 243mm *...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781681375892Author Hannah ArendtFormat PaperbackPage Count 272Imprint NYRB ClassicsPublisher The New York Review of Books, Inc

Paul Celan (1920-70) is one of the best-known German poets of the Holocaust; many of his poems, admired for their spare, precise diction, deal directly with its stark themes. Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-73) is recognized as one of post-World...

In the 1980s, Clive James found his way into full-time television. In The Blaze of Obscurity, his fifth book of memoir, he delivers the inside story. A hilarious, thoughtful, warts and all account of a life in the public eye.'Clive James is an...

'Perfect' Lena Dunham 'This year's literary sensation' Evening StandardHow far would you travel to become a writer?8000 miles from home1085 calories a day3 months to write the novel that would make her nameAt least that was the plan. But when Nell...

From one of the great modern writers, the acclaimed lectures in which he draws on a lifetime of experience to take the measure of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets "W. H. Auden, poet and critic, will conduct a course on Shakespeare at the New School for...

Thomas Paine is one of the greatest political advocates in history. Declaration of the Rights of Man, first published in 1791, is the key to his reputation. Inspired by his outrage at Edmund Burke's attack on the uprising of the French people, Paine's...

What was I fighting for? Even now I'm not sure. Something so old and so deep, it has no words, no shape, no logic.Viv Albertine has always been obsessed with the truth: the truth about family, power, and her identity as a rebel and outsider. But at what...

A biography of Vergil, Rome's greatest poet, by the acclaimed translator of the Aeneid "Ms. Ruden has converted the writer of the Aeneid from a noble and stodgy 'ancient' into our contemporary . . . persuasively re-imagined [as] a sympathetic,...

'I hated the office. I hated my work...the only career in life within my reach was that of an author.' The only autobiography by a major Victorian novelist, Trollope's account offers a fascinating insight into his literary life and opinions. After a...

Late one evening in March 1924, a tipsy young nun was seen trying to slip into Balliol, an all-male Oxford college, just as the gates were about to close for the night. The nun - subsequently unmasked as the son of the college bursar - was returning...

The Perfect Stranger was first published in the '60s and since then has continued to find a select group of passionate admirers. Evocative and engaging, and ultimately deeply emotional, The Perfect Stranger is the story of a soldier, a poet and a husband...

From his birth in 1916 (in the carding room of a cotton mill) until he ran away to London, William Woodruff lived in the heart of Blackburn's weaving community. But after Lancashire's supremacy in cotton textiles had ended with the crash of 1920, his...

No other poet excites such fanatical, worldwide devotion as Robert Burns (otherwise known as Rabbie Burns, Scotland's Favourite Son, the Ploughman Poet, the Bard of Ayrshire or simply the Bard). Ian McIntyre's biography, first published to mark the...

** The Sunday Times Best Literary Book of 2023**** A Waterstones Best Book of 2023**'All Sorts of Lives is a beautiful, fastidiously researched and fascinating exploration of Mansfield's life and work' A.L. KENNEDYRestless outsider, masher-up of form and...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.AwardsWinner of BCALA Literary Award 2021 and Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters - Nonfiction 2020 and Stowe Prize 2021. Short-listed for Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo...

'Deeply moving, darkly funny and hugely powerful' Robert Macfarlane'A brave, lit-up account of going mad and getting better' Jeanette WintersonAfter a lifetime of ups and downs, Horatio Clare was committed to hospital under Section 2 of the Mental Health...

A unique chronicle of the hundred-year period when the Jewish people changed the world - and it changed them Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Bernhardt and Kafka. Between the middle of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a few dozen men and women...

A radical look at Jane Austen as you've never seen her - as a lover of farce, comic theatre and juvenilia. The Genius of Jane Austen celebrates Britain's favourite novelist 200 years after her death and explores why her books make such...

The extraordinary life of one of the world's greatest music and literary icons, in the words of those who knew him best.Poet, novelist, singer-songwriter, artist, prophet, icon-there has never been a figure like Leonard Cohen. He was a true giant in...