Literary Criticism

Life at Full Tilt is a whirlwind tour of Dervla Murphy s travels. It begins in Spain in 1956, before her first book, and follows in her tracks for over...

THE NUMBER ONE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER'Irby might be our great bard of quarantine.' New York Times'SO funny. Samantha Irby makes staying in feel like like a luxury, and reminds...

'A loot drop of brilliance' Naomi Alderman, author of The PowerWhether you're an avid gamer, a Twitch subscriber, or just an incidental Subway Surfer, video games have changed the way...

'Good writers offer advice. Great writers offer condolences' If you want to be a writer, then you'd better be ready to hurl yourself at the door. That's the message from...

'Mary Gaitskill is willing to think about the problematic with complexity and humanity, and without taking sides or engaging in all the fashionable moral hectoring that passes for serious thought...

A Bloody and Barbarous God investigates the relationship between gnosticism, a system of thought that argues that the cosmos is evil and that the human spirit must strive for liberation...

A Bloody and Barbarous God investigates the relationship between gnosticism, a system of thought that argues that the cosmos is evil and that the human spirit must strive for liberation...

The inspiring novels that have left a significant mark on the world of literature and popular culture. Before the novel, the world of books was dominated by scientific tomes, religious...

The gold standard anthology for anyone who wants to understand the development and current state of literary theory. Offering 191 pieces by 157 authors, The Norton Anthology of Theory and...

Could drugs offer a new way of seeing the world? In 1953, in the presence of an investigator, Aldous Huxley took four-tenths of a gramme of mescalin, sat down and...

Why should one half be free to live, while the other is doomed to watch silently from the sidelines? In this visionary collection, Virginia Woolf leads us on a transformative...

This market-leading illustrated dictionary contains 12,500 authoritative entries on all aspects of medical science. Written by a team of medical experts, all entries have been revised and updated for this...

A reissue of the profound and meandering modern classic about the historical, political and philosophical paths traced by walkers.What does it mean to be out walking in the world? From...

A timeless travelogue from the leading light of the Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac's Lonesome Traveller is a jubilant celebration of human discovery, published in Penguin Modern Classics.As he roams the...

This guide to morals is the culmination of the author's lifetime of work in philosophy. The author is concerned with the humanistic part of the history of philosophy, Plato to...

A TLS Book of the Year This exhilarating collection of non-fiction sees one of the greatest twentieth-century writers meditating on the moments that make up a life'How did I so...

From cultural icon Margaret Atwood comes a brilliant collection of essays -- funny, erudite, endlessly curious, uncannily prescient -- which seek answers to Burning Questions such as: Why do people...

Plagued by insomnia for twenty years, Marie Darrieussecq turns her attention to the causes, implications and consequences of sleeplessness: a nocturnal suffering that culminates at 4 a.m. and then defines...

THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLERA FINANCIAL TIMES, ECONOMIST AND MAIL ON SUNDAY BOOK OF THE YEAR'Outstanding, universal and unique' NEW YORK TIMES'A literary phenomenon.' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT'Masterly.' ECONOMIST'Mindboggling' TELEGRAPHAn enthralling 6,000-year journey...

The texts in this volume represent Kristin Ross's attempt to think the question of the everyday across a range of discourses, practices and knowledges, from philosophy to history, from the...

A thrilling and vivid work of history, Class War weaves together literature and politics to chart the making and unmaking of social class through revolutionary combat. In a narrative that...

An award-winning study of England's unique and peculiarly insular variant of modernism. While the battles for modern art and society were being fought in France and Spain, it has seemed...

Like all the greatest writers, Samuel Beckett was primarily interested in discovering the meaning and purpose of life and of the world into which we are born. Knowledgeable about the...

Increasingly Samuel Beckett is seen as the culmination of the great literature of the twentieth century - the successor to Proust, Joyce and Kafka, and a writer whose relevance to...

***AMAZON BEST BOOK OF DECEMBER******A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF THE YEAR******LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER***A young queer science writer on some of the ocean's strangest creatures and what they can...

A Guest at the Feast uncovers the places where politics and poetics meet, where life and fiction overlap, where one can be inside writing and also outside of it.From the...

Originally published by Gryphon Books in 1993, Difficult Lives was one of the earliest attempts to track the legacy of original paperback writers such as Jim Thompson, David Goodis and...

'A hugely entertaining and well-written tour of the links between math and literature. Hart's lightness of touch and passion for both subjects make this book a delight to read. Bookworms...

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Grave takes a ground-level view of how burial sites have transformed over time and...

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Alarms are alarming. They wake us up, demand our attention and force us to...

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things."OK" as a word accepts proposals, describes the world as satisfactory (but not good),...

While his memory languished under Nazi censorship, Franz Kafka covertly circulated through occupied France and soon emerged as a cultural icon, read by the most influential intellectuals of the time...

For those that have mastered the basics of memoir and wish to probe this brand of creative nonfiction further, Writing the Radical Memoir uses salient theories about memory and the...

'A superlative piece of writing... provocative, loving and profound' THE TIMES'Without exaggeration, an awe-inspiring achievement' NIGELLA LAWSON'Moving, funny, and liable to unexpectedly cause me to tear up' NEIL GAIMANAn Irish...

What do you do with death and dying when they can no longer be pushed to the outer limits of your lived experience or dismissed from your conscious mind? How...

To celebrate the centenary of the publication of Ulysses, the most important literary work of the twentieth century, eighteen artists, writers and thinkers respond to an episode each of the...

'Ferrara's book is an introduction to writing as a process of revelation, but it's also a celebration of these things still undeciphered, and many other tantalising mysteries besides.' - The...

A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week'This is such a great idea for a book, and Michelle Dean carries it off, showing us the complexities of her fascinating, extraordinary...

On Women brings together Susan Sontag's most fearless and incisive writing on women, a crucial aspect of her work that has not until now received the attention it deserves.For the...

Anita Leslie (1914-85), best known for popular biographies of her relatives including Jennie Churchill, Winston's mother, was also an unlikely war heroine. In 1940, Anita volunteered as an ambulance driver....

Why Japan? In Fifty Sounds, winner of the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, Polly Barton attempts to exhaust her obsession with the country she moved to at the age of...

An irresistible, nostalgic, insightful-and "consistently intelligent and funny" (The New York Times Book Review)-ramble through classic children's literature from Vanity Fair contributing editor (and father of two) Bruce Handy.The dour...

Letters, postcards, notes and telegraphs from the great and the good, the notorious and the downright wicked, shine a spotlight on a range of historical events and movements providing an...

Reading a story to another person creates a bond between two people. It is often assumed that reading aloud is only for children, but the practice was once a common...