Literary Memoir

The superb classic memoir from a dazzlingly eccentric and endlessly fascinating author - a woman very much ahead of her time - including her time spent on the glorious island of Skiathos. Nancy Spain was one of the most celebrated - and notorious - writers and broadcasters of the '40s, '50s and '60s. Hilarious, controversial and brilliant, she lived openly as a lesbian (sharing a household with her two lovers and their various children) and was frequently litigated against for her newspaper columns - Evelyn Waugh successfully sued her for libel...twice.

In this powerful, unforgettable memoir, acclaimed novelist Darin Strauss examines the far-reaching consequences of the tragic moment that has shadowed his whole life. In his last month of high school, he was behind the wheel of his dad's Oldsmobile, driving with friends, heading off to play...

It’s tough being an author these days, and it’s getting harder. But, as Jason Boog shows in a rich mix of history and politics, this is not the first period when writers have struggled to scratch a living. Between accounts of contemporary layoffs and shrinking paychecks for authors and publishing professionals are stories from the 1930s when writers, hard hit by the Great Depression, fought to create unions and New Deal projects like the Federal Writers Project.

Director of the cult 1980s film Chashme Baddoor and critically acclaimed movies such as Sparsh and Saaz; seasoned Marathi theatre personality; winner of three National Film Awards and two Filmfare Awards; recipient of the Padma Bhushan – Sai Paranjpye has many feathers in the patchwork quilt...

Evelyn Harbinger sees nothing wrong with a one-night stand. At 149 years old, Eve may look like she bakes oatmeal cookies in the afternoon and dozes in her rocking chair in the evening, but once the gray hair and wrinkles are traded for jet-black tresses and porcelain skin, she can still turn heads as the beautiful girl she once was. Can't fault a girl for having a little fun, can you?

Capturing everyday lives and exceptional dreams, Australian novels have held up a mirror to the nation, reflecting the good and the bad. Touching on colonial invasion, the bush myth, world wars, mass migration, the recognition of Indigenous sovereignty and the emergence of a modern global, multicultural nation, Carl examines how these pivotal events and persuasive ideas have shaped some of Australia's most influential novels and how these books, in turn, made us.

Abraham Lincoln, our greatest president, believed that our national character was defined by three key moments: the writing of the Constitution, our declaration of independence from England, and the beginning of slavery on the North American continent.

Award-winning children's author Mitali Perkins grew up steeped in stories - escaping into her books on the fire escape of a Flushing apartment building and, later, finding solace in them as she navigated between the cultures of her suburban California school and her Bengali heritage at home. Now Perkins invites us to explore the promise of seven timeless children's novels for adults living in uncertain times: stories that provide mirrors to our innermost selves and open windows to other worlds.

Few would question that Albert Camus (1913-1960), novelist, playwright, philosopher and journalist, is a major cultural icon. His widely quoted works have led to countless movie adaptions, graphic novels, pop songs, and even t-shirts. In this Very Short Introduction, Oliver Gloag chronicles the inspiring story of Camus' life. From a poor fatherless settler in French-Algeria to the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Gloag offers a comprehensive view of Camus' major works and interventions.

In this part-memoir, part-manifesto, an acclaimed poet interprets Black radical literary traditions to reimagine freedom through refusal. Over the past decade, Camonghne Felix has been at the center of American politics, working in strategy, communications, and as a speechwriter. Throughout it...

In a series of fascinating conversations with eighteen American poets, and in dozens of poems, The Language of Life celebrates language in its "most exalted, wrenching, delighted, and concentrated form," and its unique power to recreate the human experience: falling in love, facing death, leaving home, losing faith, finding God.

Thomas More is an enduringly fascinating and profoundly controversial figure. A brilliant scholar, his Utopia of 1516 dared to imagine how society might be completely reordered. At the same time, his hatred of the Reformation caused him to advocate, and seek to implement, the death penalty for heretics. A friend and advisor to Henry VIII, More's refusal to support Henry's break with Rome led to his execution in 1535, and the start of a long argument about his legacy.

How is it that Flaubert, the great 19th-century novelist and last of the great French romantics, still seems so very modern? In this stunning biography, Geoffrey Wall investigates why Flaubert and his work, Madame Bovary, exert such a firm hold on the popular literary imagination.

Biographer Alexandra Popoff traces the life and creative achievement of Ayn Rand (1905–1982), one of America’s most provocative writers and whose best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged have enjoyed impressive longevity. Born into a Jewish family in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Rand (then Alisa Rosenbaum) lived through the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Civil War, and the onset of Soviet totalitarian dictatorships––experiences that made her profoundly anticommunist.

Sie ist die Frau, der man nachsagt, dass sie kein Glück in der Liebe hat. Diejenige, die ihr Leben allein regelt: Die Frau ohne Begleitung. Als die Autorin feststellt, dass auch sie so eine geworden ist - ein weiblicher Langzeit-Single - ist die Erkenntnis ein Schock. Dann eine Befreiung. Und ein Ansporn, nicht nur für eine schonungslose Selbsterkundung, sondern auch für eine überfällige Spurensuche.

James Tully's father is dead, like "Jesus dead and door nailed". His fiancée has moved out, and his world is as rootless as a fallen tree. He will travel home along the river that bound him and that bound his father to the constant rain and the residue of his past, to the last days of his father’s life long suicide, what seemed to kill them both. James is a product of his past, of his parents’ push and pull.

When Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert of Green Gables, Prince Edward Island, send for a boy orphan to help them out at the farm, they are in no way prepared for the error that will change their lives. The mistake takes the shape of Anne Shirley, a redheaded 11-year-old girl who can talk anyone under the table. Fortunately, her sunny nature and quirky imagination quickly win over her reluctant foster parents. Anne's feisty spirit soon draws many friends - and much trouble - her way.

Tess Chakkalakal gives listeners the first comprehensive biography of Charles W. Chesnutt. A complex and talented man, Chesnutt was born in 1858 in Cleveland to parents who were considered "mixed race." Though light-skinned, Chesnutt remained a member of the black community throughout his life. He studied among students at the State Colored Normal School who were formerly enslaved. He became a teacher in rural North Carolina during Reconstruction. His life in the South of those years, the issue of race, and how he himself identified as Black informed much of his later writing.

Che cosa si prova a vivere con la morte come assidua compagna? Per piú di un anno Ilan Fernández, uno dei maggiori narcotrafficanti a livello internazionale, oggi imprenditore di successo, ha raccontato a Giulio Laurenti la sua vita rocambolesca e pericolosa: anzi, le sue due vite. Quelle confessioni sono diventate un romanzo, dalla voce inconfondibile e unica, col timbro della verità definitiva. E la cocaina ci appare sotto una luce che non avevamo mai considerato, frutto come è di uno smercio intriso di morte.

Written seven years before The Town and the City officially launched his writing career, The Sea Is My Brother marks the pivotal point at which Kerouac began laying the foundations for his pioneering method and signature style. The novel chronicles the misadventures of two seamen who at first seem different but are really two sides of the same coin: 27-year-old Wesley Martin, who “loved the sea with a strange, lonely love,” and William Everhart, an assistant professor of English at Columbia College.