A novel in seven volumes, Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is considered a major literary work of the twentieth century. And even more crucially, one that you should have read by now. However, as one of its most distinguishing features is its staggering length, many of us feel intimidated and perhaps, even, fatigued at the thought of diving in. Alain de Botton's hilarious and unexpected Proustian manual, is then, the perfect antidote to this problem. In How Proust Can Change Your Life, de Botton masterfully distils what Proust says about friendship, reading, being alive and taking your time, and mixes it with his own, no less nourishing commentary. As de Botton rereads Proust for our collective benefit, we see the continued relevance of his work and the rich and varied insights he can offer us, from how to reinvigorate your relationship to being a good host. This is Proust as you've never seen him before. He may even change your life.--Back cover

In 2003, South African writer J. M. Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his riveting portrayals of racial repression, sexual politics, the guises of reason, and the hypocrisy of human beings toward animals and nature. Coetzee was credited with being "a scrupulous doubter, ruthless in his criticism of the cruel rationalism and cosmetic morality of western civilization." The film of his novel Disgrace , starring John Malkovich, brought his challenging ideas to a new audience. Anton Leist and Peter Singer have assembled an outstanding group of contributors who probe deeply into Coetzee's extensive and extraordinary corpus. They explore his approach to ethical theory and philosophy and pay particular attention to his representation of the human-animal relationship. They also confront Coetzee's depiction of the elementary conditions of life, the origins of morality, the recognition of value in others, the sexual dynamics between men and women, the normality of suppression, and the possibility of equality in postcolonial society. With its wide-ranging consideration of philosophical issues, especially in relation to fiction, this volume stands alone in its extraordinary exchange of ethical and literary inquiry.

Before Jane Austen, William Deresiewicz was a very different young man. A sullen and arrogant graduate student, he never thought Austen would have anything to offer him. Then he read Emma— and everything changed. In this unique and lyrical book, Deresiewicz weaves the misadventures of Austen’s characters with his own youthful follies, demonstrating the power of the great novelist’s teachings—and how, for Austen, growing up and making mistakes are one and the same. Honest, erudite, and deeply moving, A Jane Austen Education is the story of one man’s discovery of the world outside himself.

Robert A. Heinlein began publishing in the 1940s at the dawn of the Golden Age of science fiction, and today he is considered one of the genre's 'big three' alongside Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. His short stories were instrumental in developing its structure and rhetoric, while novels such as Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers demonstrated that such writing could be a vehicle for political argument. Heinlein's influence remains strong, but his legacy is fiercely contested. His vision of the future was sometimes radical, sometimes deeply conservative, and arguments have flared up recently about which faction has the most significant claim on his ideas. In this major critical study, Hugo Award-winner Farah Mendlesohn carries out a close reading of Heinlein's work, including unpublished stories, essays, and speeches. It sets out not to interpret a single book, but to think through the arguments Heinlein made over a lifetime about the nature of science fiction, about American politics, and about himself.

Hermione Lee's critical 'estimation' of Bowen's work finds the author's witty, stylish treatment of manners and emotions to have an austere basis in her critique of the English middle classes. Underlying the struggles of will between individuals in her novels and stories is a diagnosis of the dislocation and dispossessin of a whole society. Her preccupation with betrayal and loss, and her interest in conflict (between innocence and experience, egotism and social pressures, memory and the present) are fully considered. In estimating the value of the whole range of her work, the book pays particular attention to the Anglo-Irish context, to Elizabeth Bowen's extraordinary evocation of war-time London, to her penetration into the minds of children and adolescents, and to her special predilection for the macabre and the supernatural. It also considers her achievement as a critic and a historian.

Winner of the 2020 Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, France's best foreign book of the year. 'Astounding' Sebastian Barry 'A masterpiece' Ayad Akhtar 'This little book is ruminative, humane, and gorgeously precise' Jonathan Lethem In this genre-defying book, best-selling memoirist and critic Daniel Mendelsohn explores the mysterious links between the randomness of the lives we lead and the artfulness of the stories we tell. Combining memoir, biography, history, and literary criticism, Three Rings weaves together the stories of three exiled writers who turned to the classics of the past to create masterpieces of their own-works that pondered the nature of narrative itself. Erich Auerbach, the Jewish philologist who fled Hitler's Germany and wrote his classic study of Western literature, Mimesis, in Istanbul. Francois Fenelon, the seventeenth-century French archbishop whose ingenious sequel to the Odyssey,The Adventures of Telemachus - a veiled critique of the Sun King and the best-selling book in Europe for one hundred years - resulted in his banishment. And the German novelist W. G. Sebald, self-exiled to England, whose distinctively meandering narratives explore Odyssean themes of displacement, nostalgia, and separation from home. Intertwined with these tales of exile and artistic crisis is an account of Mendelsohn's struggles to write two of his own books-a family saga of the Holocaust and a memoir about reading the Odyssey with his elderly father-that are haunted by tales of oppression and wandering. As Three Rings moves to its startling conclusion, a climactic revelation about the way in which the lives of its three heroes were linked across borders, languages, and centuries forces the reader to reconsider the relationship between narrative and history, art and life.

In this fourth edition of his celebrated study of Faulkner, Irving Howe analyzes all of the great author's works, emphasizing the themes that run throughout the novels and stories. "The scheme of my book is simple," Mr. Howe writes. "First, I have tried to say what Faulkner's work is `about,' to report on the social and moral themes in his books; and then I have tried to analyze and evaluate the more important novels." Anyone who has enjoyed the special flavor of Faulkner's writing will appreciate Mr. Howe's careful analysis, and the student of twentieth-century American literature will gain new perspective and insight. Mr.Howe successfully portrays the intimate connection between Faulkner's fiction and the emotional and psychic history of the South without slighting the universality that makes him one of America's greatest writers. "Mr. Howe is a shrewd critic, and he writes of Faulkner's achievements as a practicing novelist with a wary respect. He has a good many observations to make that should help readers in going through the novels.”―Alfred Kazin, New York Times.

"An award-winning historian revisits Marcel Proust's masterpiece in this essay on literature and memory, exploring the question of identity-that of the novel's narrator and Proust's own. In this engaging reexamination of In Search of Lost Time, Saul Friedländer considers how the narrator defines himself, how this compares to what we know of Proust himself, and what the significance is of these various points of commonality and divergence. We know, for example, that the author did not hide his homosexuality, but the narrator did. Why the difference? We know that the narrator tried to marginalize his part-Jewish background. Does this reflect the author's position, and how does the narrator handle what he tries, but does not manage, to dismiss? These are major questions raised by the text and reflected in the text, to which the author's life doesn't give obvious answers. The narrator's reflections on time, on death, on memory, and on love are as many paths leading to the image of self that he projects. In Proustian Uncertainties, Friedländer draws on his personal experience from a life spent investigating the ties between history and memory to offer a fresh perspective on the seminal work"--

This is a reissue of a critical introduction to the novels of Virginia Woolf, first published in 1977. It makes close, illuminating readings of her nine novels, placing Woolf in her literary context and providing an accessible, clear and valuable guide for students starting out on a study of Woolf as a novelist, and for general readers seeking a fresh, helpful entry-point to the challenge of reading Woolf. Twenty years later, Hermione Lee wrote a prize-winning and acclaimed biography of Virginia Woolf: this critical study represented an early stage in this biographer-criticâe(tm)s life-long interest and involvement with Woolfâe(tm)s life and work.

Views of the Jew's body as different, deficient, and a carrier of disease (particularly tuberculosis) were common in Europe in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. Examines the role of these views in Kafka's writings and in his own life (1883-1924), which was plagued by sickliness and tuberculosis. In his writings, Kafka attempted to transcend his Jewishness and his physical limitations, although he knew that such attempts were futile. Discusses effects of the Dreyfus Affair and of blood libel trials on his work. Kafka seemed to typify the contemporary stereotype of the "Jewish patient", who was seen as suffering more from a fear of illness and grasping at every advantage that could be taken. Discusses the history of tuberculosis, its designation in the late 19th century as a Jewish disease, and Kafka's discourse about it.

The first monograph on Edmund de Waal, the internationally renowned artist and bestselling author of The Hare with the Amber Eyes . Featuring contributions from Emma Crichton–Miller, Colm Toibin, Peter Carey, AS Byatt, Alexandra Munroe, and Deborah Saunt. The first complete survey of de Waal’s career to date, this groundbreaking monograph encompasses major exhibitions and installations at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate Liverpool, and the Gagosian Gallery in New York. Stunning photography conveys the delicacy of de Waal’s works and provides a rare glimpse into his studio practice. In addition to being one of the world’s leading ceramicists, de Waal is also a renowned historian of the medium. His critical and personal essays and poetry are interspersed throughout the book, bringing to light the prominence of ceramics in our everyday lives. Together, de Waal’s art and writing speak to his enduring fascination with the nature of objects and the attendant history of their collection and display. Contributions to this monograph by novelists Colm Toibin, Peter Carey, and AS Byatt appear alongside critical essays by Guggenheim curator Alexandra Munroe, journalist Emma Crichton–Miller, and architect Deborah Saunt. Elegant papers and a tooled case make Edmund de Waal an exquisitely collectable object.

One of the most original political thinkers of the Enlightenment, Montesquieu utilized his passionate belief in toleration and the moral benefits of science to construct a naturalistic system of political science based on the study of history, comparative government, and human behavior. This volume reveals Montesquieu's purpose by exploring the range of his literary output, focusing on his scandalous novel, The Persian Letters (1721), his philosophical history, Considerations on the Greatness and Decline of the Romans (1734), and his magnum opus, The Spirit of the Laws (1748).

Examines the themes, literary significance, and style of the English novelist's first seven works

"Distinguished theater critic John Lahr brings unique perspective to the life of Arthur Miller (1915-2005), the playwright who almost single-handedly propelled twentieth-century American theater into a new level of cultural sophistication. Organized around the fault lines of Miller's life--his family, the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, Elia Kazan and the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Marilyn Monroe, Vietnam, and the rise and fall of Miller's role as a public intellectual--this book demonstrates the synergy between Arthur Miller's psychology and his plays. Concentrating largely on Miller's most prolific decades of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, Lahr probes Miller's early playwriting failures; his work writing radio plays during World War II after being rejected for military service; his only novel, Focus; and his succession of award-winning and canonical plays that include All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, and The Crucible, providing an original interpretation of Miller's work and his personality."--

Notes on Sontag is a frank, witty, and entertaining reflection on the work, influence, and personality of one of the "foremost interpreters of . . . our recent contemporary moment." Adopting Sontag's favorite form, a set of brief essays or notes that circle around a topic from different perspectives, renowned essayist Phillip Lopate considers the achievements and limitations of his tantalizing, daunting subject through what is fundamentally a conversation between two writers. Reactions to Sontag tend to be polarized, but Lopate's account of Sontag's significance to him and to the culture over which she loomed is neither hagiography nor hatchet job. Despite admiring and being inspired by her essays, he admits a persistent ambivalence about Sontag. Lopate also describes the figure she cut in person through a series of wry personal anecdotes of his encounters with her over the years. Setting out from middle-class California to invent herself as a European-style intellectual, Sontag raised the bar of critical discourse and offered up a model of a freethinking, imaginative, and sensual woman. But while crediting her successes, Lopate also looks at how her taste for aphorism and the radical high ground led her into exaggerations that could do violence to her own common sense, and how her ambition to be seen primarily as a novelist made her undervalue her brilliant essays. Honest yet sympathetic, Lopate's engaging evaluation reveals a Sontag who was both an original and very much a person of her time.

One hundred years after the publication of Looking Backward, Bellamy remains a controversial figure in American literary and social history. The collection of essays in this volume, commemorating the novel's appearance in 1888, attests to his continued importance.

"This book is mind-blowing. Nemerov is a groundbreaking thinker in his field."—John Wilmerding, Princeton University "This is a book for all serious Americanists."—Jay Fliegelman, author of Declaring Independence "Each haunting and delicately wrought canvas expands as Nemerov writes about it, so that his interpretive work both mirrors and supplements the wondrous intensity of the paintings themselves."—Ellen Handler Spitz, Museums of the Mind "Underneath their apparent simplicity, Raphaelle Peale's still lifes glow mysteriously in the dark light of their making. Peale transformed the common items of the early-nineteenth-century kitchen and market into explorations of the American unconscious. Now, writing as coolly and lucidly as Peale painted, Alexander Nemerov has unpeeled those still lifes in a tour de force of formalistic analysis. Through close interrogation of these small, hermetic images, Nemerov's book reveals the whole world of early America, in the process bringing us as close as possible to the genius of Raphaelle Peale."—David C. Ward, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. "This is a dazzling study, lively and imaginative, of an important body of work. Nemerov's novel arguments regarding still life in general and Raphaelle Peale in particular reveal much about the art, the man, and the times. It is a thoughtful and provocative book, certain to generate interest and debate. "—Charles C. Eldredge, Hall Distinguished Professor of American Art and Culture, University of Kansas "A triumph of interpretation! Not since Michael Fried's groundbreaking account of Thomas Eakins has a critic so reimagined the very terms by which we see painting. Nemerov's account singlehandedly catapults a painter we had previously considered to be interesting, but minor, into the forefront of discussions about American art during the early National Period. The Body of Raphaelle Peale will no doubt spark the beginning of an exciting revival of scholarship in American Romantic painting."—Bryan J. Wolf, author of Romantic Re-Vision

Edouard Roditi's critical study of Oscar Wilde, originally published in 1947 in New Directions' Makers of Modern Literature Series, was a pioneering attempt to evaluate a literary reputation long distorted by the journalistic appetite for scandal. Relegating biography to a back seat, Roditi addressed the important of Wilde's ingenious, imaginative, and dialectical thought in his own time and showed how his poetry, novels, plays, and critical writings were a key influence in the shift of English and American literature away from established and aging Romanticism toward Modernism. For this first paperbound edition of his perceptive and erudite study of Wilde, Roditi has added three additional chapters touching on new material about Wilde as well as the new public attitudes about homosexuality that have evolved since the book was first published. An American long resident in Paris, Edouard Roditi is an internationally known linguist, scholar, art critic, and author and translator of a considerable number of works of fiction and poetry, criticism and biography. A collection of his witty and exotic short stories, The Delights of Turkey, is available under the New Directions imprint.

In 1935, while Virginia Woolf was alive and building her career as a woman writer, Ruth Gruber published a seminal essay on the novelist that is now seen as the first feminist interpretation of Woolf's writings and life. Seventy years after its original publication, Gruber's seminal critique is available once again, with new material that makes it more relevant for readers today. Virginia Woolf: The Will to Create as a Woman includes several previously unpublished letters exchanged between Woolf and Gruber, and a new introduction in which Gruber recalls her 1933 meeting with the English writer, examining the questions surrounding Woolf's bi-polar illness and anti-Semitism. In this groundbreaking assessment of Woolf's philosophy, influences, and style, Gruber laid the groundwork for a generation of future feminist analyses. She cogently examines Woolf's concept of gender and her literary influences, adeptly discussing how Woolf constructed a feminine writing style in a realm dominated by men. Above all, she shows how Woolf consciously strove to create as a woman. Virginia Woolf's experimental prose and her struggles with mental illness have made her an enduringly provocative figure, and today, more than sixty years after her suicide, Woolf's writing continues to fascinate and inspire readers.