Literary Essays

This program is read by Earphones Award–winning narrator Edoardo Ballerini. "Edoardo Ballerini reads my books exceptionally well. He gets my pacing, the inflections of muted irony, the anxiety of loss, the search for meaning that my prose on paper isn’t always able to convey—he gets it all...

Setting out to create a collection of J. Frank Dobie’s writing that brings him to life and makes him relevant to current generations, Steven L. Davis has combed through the works of this renowned Texas author, gathering together in one volume Dobie’s most vital writings. Dobie’s stories and essays here are meticulously edited to prune away some of the brushy undergrowth and bring Dobie’s folksy, erudite voice bounding back to life.

Over the last decade, William Giraldi has established himself as a charismatic and uncompromising literary essayist. American Audacity gathers Giraldi's fierce and witty considerations of American writers and themes, including a never-before-published appreciation of James Baldwin and an introductory call to arms for 21st-century American literature.

In a book that begins with a series of lynchings and ends with a series of apologies, Eula Biss explores race in America. Her response to the topic is informed by the experiences chronicled in these essays - teaching in a Harlem school on the morning of 9/11, reporting for an African American newspaper in San Diego, watching the aftermath of Katrina from a college town in Iowa, and settling in Chicago’s most diverse neighborhood.

Aleister Crowley left behind a literary legacy of hundreds of examples of his authorship, in diverse categories of writing. Collected here is a sampling of those writings.

Brought to you by Penguin. Two leading thinkers present alternative answers to one of the most difficult and divisive questions of our times: Is free speech under threat? Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America, the leading free expression organisation, argues that alongside the necessary and...

Diciotto canzoni, diciannove donne straordinarie. Simone Sarasso, autore innamorato della montagna e della fatica, racconta le eroine del trail running con le canzoni che sono diventate, concerto dopo concerto, la colonna sonora della sua vita. Una raccolta di ritratti non convenzionali. Dagli AC/DC ai Green Day, dai Doors ai Metallica passando per le sonorità più ricercate (ma non per questo meno selvagge) delle Bikini Kill e dei Pogues, Sarasso ripercorre le carriere delle atlete più forti del panorama italiano e internazionale.

*Named one of TIME magazine's Most Anticipated Titles of 2022* From a Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestselling author and poet comes a galvanizing meditation on the power of art and culture to illuminate America's unresolved problem with race. In the midst of civil unrest in the...

One of the giants of Hindi literature, Jainendra introduced the ‘psychological’ in Hindi fiction. Questions of love, marriage and relationships occupy much of Jainendra’s works, taking them into the realm of the internal and the intimate. In The Resignation, Jainendra tells the story of...

So here I am, delving into the past like Monsieur Poirot, not to solve a mystery, but to try to understand some of the events that have helped define the sort of person I have become. Some of it, naturally, is in the genes; but much of it is in the environment, in the circumstances in which we...

The theme of trust, betrayed or fulfilled, runs through this collection of short stories: Parents lead children into peril, husbands abandon wives, wives manipulate husbands, and time undermines all. Love pangs, a favorite subject of the author, take on a new urgency as earthquakes, illnesses...

A deeply humane new collection by a luminary of Bengali literature A radiant collection of poetry about womanhood, intimacy, and the body politic that together evokes the arc of an ordinary life. Nabaneeta Dev Sen's rhythmic lines explore the joys and agonies of first love, childbirth, and decay...

In this collection, Vivian Gornick turns her attention to a large theme in literature: the struggle for the semblance of inner freedom. In the essays collected here, she explores the work of V. S. Naipaul, James Baldwin, George Gissing, Randall Jarrell, H. G. Wells, Loren Eiseley, Allen Ginsberg, Hayden Carruth, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth.

Colum McCann's Everything in This Country Must, a writer of fierce originality and haunting lyricism, turns to the troubles in Northern Ireland and reveals the reverberations of political tragedy in the most intimate lives of men and women, parents and children. In the title story, a teenage...

Wenn sich einer der profiliertesten deutschsprachigen Autoren unserer Zeit mit dem Thema Humor in der Literatur auseinandersetzt, braucht er gute Gründe. Sven Regener hatte sie: Er war 2016 eingeladen, als Inhaber der GrimmProfessur der Universität Kassel eine PoetikVorlesung zu halten und er schlägt sich, seit er Romane veröffentlicht, damit herum, dass diese als witzig, komisch, humorvoll gelten, obwohl sie eigentlich traurige Geschichten erzählen von Leuten, die es im Leben nicht leicht haben und bei denen das Scheitern stets wahrscheinlicher ist als das Gelingen.

Named a 2024 Pulitzer Prize Finalist and a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Pick “Among the year's highlights . . . groundbreaking, epic . . . Like visitors exiting the Met’s galleries, readers will emerge from Information Desk bedazzled by the transformative horizons of art...

Let's get one thing straight: Small, Broke, and Kind of Dirty: Affirmations for the Real World is not a book of advice. You're not going to find a step-by-step guide to meditation here, or even reminders to drink lots of water and get enough sleep. Those things are all good for you, but that's not what Hana Shafi wants to talk about. Instead, Small, Broke, and Kind of Dirty focuses on our common and never-ending journey of self-discovery. It explores the ways in which the world can all too often wear us down, and reminds us to remember our worth, even when it's hard to do so.

From the National Book Award–winning author of Lighthead, Terrance Hayes, a fascinating collection of graphic reviews and illustrated prose addressing the last century of American poetry—to be published simultaneously with his latest poetry collection, So to Speak Canonized, overlooked, and...

From a 2021 Whiting Award and Guggenheim Fellow recipient, a “rhapsodic, rigorous poetry collection, which pays homage to everyday Black experience in the U.S.” (The New Yorker) Gregory Pardlo described Joshua Bennett's first collection of poetry, The Sobbing School, as an "arresting debut"...

A remarkable series of audiobooks, featuring distinguished twentieth-century American poets reading from their own work. A first in audiobook publishing--a series that uses the written word to enhance the listening experience--poetry to be read as well as heard. Each audiobook includes rare...