Showing titles in Essays

'Profoundly affecting' GUARDIAN 'Extraordinary. It made me cry' MELISSA HARRISON 'Wise and beautifully written' SINÉAD GLEESON 'Made me feel that I too was more alive' LUCY CALDWELL A life is made up of many shocks - The scream of wheels over asphalt as cars collide. The unexpected death of a...

'An oracle' DOLLY ALDERTON 'Articulate[s] a universal, feminine wisdom with such ferocity it feels like she's slapping the reader around the face' OBSERVER 'Equal parts self-lacerating, tender and witty' GLAMOUR 'Furious, sharp, funny, honest' iPAPER On the Waterstones Best Books of 2025 List...

A vivid eulogy for London of the late 1970s and early '80s - the last years prior to the rise of the digital city. An elliptical, wildly atmospheric remembrance of the sites and soundtrack, at once aggressively modern and strangely elegiac, that accompanied the twilight of one era and the dawn of another.

In August 2014 Jenny Diski was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and given 'two or three years' to live. She didn't know how to react. All responses felt scripted, laden with cliché. Being a writer, she decided to write about it (grappling with the unoriginality even of this) and to tell a story she had not yet told: that of being taken in, aged 15, by the author Doris Lessing and the subsequent 50 years of their complex relationship.

First given as a series of lectures at Cambridge University, Aspects of the Novel is Forster's analysis of this great literary form. Here he rejects the 'pseudoscholarship' of historical criticism - 'that great demon of chronology' - that considers writers in terms of the period in which they wrote and instead asks us to imagine the great novelists working together in a single room. He discusses aspects of people, plot, fantasy and rhythm, making illuminating comparisons between novelists, the features shared by their books and the ways in which they differ.

A moving and insightful anthology of personal essays by Irish autistic adults. Wired Our Own Way: An Anthology of Irish Autistic Voices is the first collection of personal essays written by autistic Irish adults.

Based on two lectures Woolf delivered at the University of Cambridge, A Room of One’s Own compellingly argues for women’s intellectual freedom and the importance of financial independence. It is still considered one of the most powerful pieces of feminist writing to this day. Published in 1929, A Room of One’s Own asserts a simple message: in order for women to reach their full creative potential, they must have their own money and space with which to do it with.

In her latest forays into the American scene, Joan Didion covers ground from Washington to Los Angeles, from a TV producer's gargantuan "manor" to the racial battlefields of New York's criminal courts. At each stop she uncovers the mythic narratives that elude other observers: Didion tells us about the fantasies the media construct around crime victims and presidential candidates; she gives us new interpretations of the stories of Nancy Reagan and Patty Hearst; she charts America's rollercoaster ride through evanescent booms and hard times that won't go away.

La cocaina: la merce più usata, trafficata, desiderata del nostro tempo. Le infinite vie del narcotraffico, dal Messico alle spiagge di Miami, dalla Colombia alla Russia, dall'Africa alle strade di Milano, New York, Parigi. Il viaggio di un grande scrittore nei gironi infernali del mondo contemporaneo, dove la ferocia dilaga incontrastata ma i boss hanno imparato tutte le regole più sofisticate del business. Uno straordinario romanzo-verità.

Jenny Diski was a fearless writer, for whom no subject was too difficult, even her own cancer diagnosis. Her columns in the London Review of Books - selected here by her editor and friend Mary-Kay Wilmers, on subjects as various as death, motherhood, sexual politics and the joys of solitude - have been described as ‘virtuoso performances’ and ‘small masterpieces'. Why Didn’t You Just Do What You Were Told? is a collective interrogation of the universal experience from a very particular psyche.

“Strikingly dramatic, yet simple and unrestrained . . . an unusual and intensely interesting book richly packed with strange information.” —New York Times Book Review Based on Zora Neale Hurston’s personal experiences in Haiti and Jamaica, where she participated as an initiate rather...

Barbara Kingsolver has entertained and touched the lives of legions of readers with her critically acclaimed and bestselling novels The Bean Trees, Animal Dreams, and Pigs in Heaven. In these twenty-five newly conceived essays, she returns once again to her favored literary terrain to explore...

There are times when there doesn’t seem much to smile about. And for those times, there is this book. J. B Priestley’s 1949 classic teaches us that joy may be found in even the simplest things, and that we all have the capacity to appreciate them. Delight comprises a series of short essays, all focussing on a single simple pleasure, from reading detective stories in bed to smoking a pipe in the bath; from ‘Cosy planning’ to the earliest summer mornings; and from mineral water in the bedrooms of foreign hotels to the small of bacon in the morning.

Before Adam Farrer’s family relocated to Withernsea in 1992, he’d never heard of the Holderness coast. The move represented one thing to Adam: a chance to leave the insecurities of early adolescence behind. And he could do that anywhere. What he didn’t know was how much he’d grow to love the quirks and people of this faded Yorkshire resort, in spite of its dilapidated attractions and retreating clifftops. While Adam documents the minutiae of small-town life, he lays bare experiences that are universal.

A literary treasure of over one hundred unpublished letters from National Book Award-winning author Flannery O'Connor and her circle of extraordinary friends. Flannery O’Connor is a master of twentieth-century American fiction, joining, since her untimely death in 1964, the likes of Hawthorne...

The Challenge of Things joins earlier collections like The Reason of Things and Thinking of Answers but this time to collect Grayling's recent writings on the world in a time of war and conflict. In describing and exposing the dark side of things, he also explores ways out of the habits and prejudices of mind that would otherwise trap us forever in the deadly impasses of conflicts of all kinds.

In We Learn Nothing, satirical cartoonist Tim Kreider turns his funny, brutally honest eye to the dark truths of the human condition, asking big questions about human-sized problems: What if you survive a brush with death and it doesn't change you? Why do we fall in love with people we don't even like? How do you react when someone you've known for years unexpectedly changes genders?

Since it was first published, Eros the Bittersweet, Anne Carson's lyrical meditation on love in ancient Greek literature and philosophy, has established itself as a favorite among an unusually broad audience, including classicists, essayists, poets, and general listeners.

Self Help was published in 1859 by Samuel Smiles. It has been called "the bible of mid-Victorian liberalism". Self Help sold 20,000 copies within one year of its publication. By the time of Smiles' death in 1904, it had sold over a quarter of a million. Self-Help elevated Smiles to celebrity status; almost overnight, he became a leading pundit and much-consulted guru.

In the spirit of Mindy Kaling’s bestseller Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? or Judd Apatow’s Sick in the Head, a collection of humorous, autobiographical essays from Kunal Nayyar, best known as Raj on CBS’s #1 hit comedy The Big Bang Theory. Of all the charming misfits on television...