Biography, literature & literary studies

Nanako Hanada's life is in crisis. Recently separated from her husband, living in youth hostels and internet cafes, her work is going no better. Book sales at the eccentric Village Vanguard bookstore in Tokyo, which Nanako manages, are dwindling. Fallen out of love in all aspects of her life, Nan...

Can anyone really own a culture? This magnificent account argues that the story of global civilisations is one of mixing, sharing, and borrowing. It shows how art forms have crisscrossed continents over centuries to produce masterpieces. From Nefertiti's lost city and the Islamic Golden Age to tw...

Few books have made so great an impact, political or literary, as Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, the most famous of all anti-war novels. Startling in its realism, intensely moving in its humanity, banned and burned in Germany by the Nazis, it was an international publishin...

What happens when the news gets into your dreams and unravels the work of the day? When you feel homesick, especially when you are at home? What happens when the future tracks you down and corners you? Who blinks first? The Infinite Town is a painful - and playful - mapping of public spaces and p...

British humorist P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) charmed generations of readers with such whimsical characters as the Honourable Bertie Wooster -- a deliciously dim aristocrat -- and Jeeves, his imperturbable manservant. This entertaining collection presents six entertaining tales featuring the unfla...

International in scope and based on primary research, this book gathers twelve new essays by critics including both well-established and newer voices. It aims to stimulate further enquiry, research and critical reflection, in sceptical, analytic or celebratory modes, on the riches of Irish litera...

Almost everything you're familiar with was first mentioned in an authorised biography written by Dickens' close friend John Forster 150 years ago. It's the version of events that Dickens himself chose to make public, and newly accessible archives reveal that it's crammed with gaps, inconsistencie...

Before her death, the artist and writer Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) had already garnered a cult following, with numerous creative people making the pilgrimage to meet her at her home in Mexico City. Since then, her fame has only increased. Thinking across contemporary art media, this book demo...

Contains 6,500 phrases organized under 500 themes, including aloneness, death, love, and peace. A masterful metaphor, like a picture, may be worth a thousand words. By comparing two unlike objects or ideas, it illuminates the similarities between them, accomplishing in a word or phrase what could...

Following in the footsteps of his literary hero, researcher and historian Oliver Lewis set out to visit all the places to have inspired and been lived in by George Orwell. Over three years he travelled from Wigan to Catalonia, Paris to Motihari, Marrakesh to Eton, and in each location explored bo...