Literary Criticism

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. No matter how much you fight against it, dust pervades everything. It gathers...

NATIONAL BESTSELLERNOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD"Heroically brave, formidably learned... The Western Canon is a passionate demonstration of why some writers have triumphantly escaped the oblivion in which...

'Make this your next inspirational read. Trust us, it's Oprah's Book Club worthy' ViceIn London in 1958, a play by a 19-year-old redefined women's writing in Britain. It also began...

Quentin Blake is one of the foremost illustrators of the twentieth century. Perhaps best known for his collaboration with Roald Dahl on books such as The Giraffe and the Pelly...

A unique history of the Beats, in the words of the movement's most central member, Allen Ginsberg, based on a seminal series of his lecturesIn 1977, twenty years after the...

Melodrama, biography, cold war thriller, drug memoir, essay in fragments, mystery - Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors is cult critic Ian Penman's long awaited first original book, a kaleidoscopic study of...

A TLS, FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, GUARDIAN AND OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEARFrom award-winning writer Claudia Rankine, the stunning follow-up to Citizen and Don't Let Me Be Lonely 'Audacious, revelatory,...

'Mendelsohn takes the classical costumes off figures like Virgil and Sappho, Homer and Horace ... He writes about things so clearly they come to feel like some of the most...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2017 SHORTLISTED FOR THE LONDON HELLENIC PRIZE 2017 WINNER OF THE PRIX MEDITERRANEE 2018 From the award-winning, best-selling writer: a deeply moving tale of...

'A remarkable book' Robert Macfarlane'A distinctive new voice: attentive and tender' Amy Liptrot'Elegant, understated, urgent and nourishing' Jessica J. LeeHome is many people and places and languages, some separated by...

*A 'BOOKS OF 2021' PICK IN THE GUARDIAN, FINANCIAL TIMES AND EVENING STANDARD*Twelve bytes. Twelve eye-opening, mind-expanding, funny and provocative essays on the implications of artificial intelligence for the way...

This comprehensive edition brings together for the first time three seminal collections by legendary essayist and journalist Joan Didion: Slouching toward Bethlehem, White Album and Sentimental Journeys. Prefaced with a...

The year 2021 marks the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri, a poet who, as T. S. Eliot put it, 'divides the world with Shakespeare, there being no...

'One for your Christmas list ... A feast of Dickensian knowledge' The Times 'This is a marvellous, endlessly illuminating book ... It doesn't go on the shelf alongside other critics;...

*THE TOP 10 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER*'This book might just change your life' Sunday Times Warm, wise and beautifully designed, Conversations on Love is the thoughtful gift for loved ones this...

A provocative history of Ulysses and the Easter Rising as harbingers of decolonization. When revolutionaries seized Dublin during the 1916 Easter Rising, they looked back to unrequited pasts to point...

A personal essay on exposure, auto-fiction, internet feminism and the anxiety epidemic. Last year Olivia Sudjic published Sympathy, a novel about surveillance and connection in the internet age. If a...

A true original. In this stunningly unusual prose debut, Doireann Ni Ghriofa sculpts essay and autofiction to explore inner life and the deep connection felt between two writers centuries apart....

'Every devotee of literature and art should read this rare, bright-lit, hard-won book, and every student of life - that is to say, everyone.' - Sebastian BarryIn this contemplative short...

With the death of her aunt, Maria Stepanova is left to sift through an apartment full of faded photographs, old postcards, letters, diaries, and heaps of souvenirs: a withered repository...

Stranger Shores, a collection of J.M. Coetzee's essays from 1986 to 1999 was followed by Inner Workings, which contained those from 2000 to 2005. Late Essays gathers together Coetzee's literary...

Ever since Arthur Conan Doyle created the pipe-smoking, deer stalkered character, Sherlock Holmes, he has become a part of popular culture for generations, and here every aspect of the legendary...

A walking guide to this historic London neighbourhood, uncovering its countercultural roots.A delightful English/Japanese pocket-size guide to London's most popular district. Through four walks London writer Julian Mash uncovers the...

Reality versus fiction is at the heart of the current literary debate. We live in a world of docu-drama, the 'real life' story. Works of art, novels, films, are frequently...

This collection of essays arises from a decade of engagement with the public culture of Britain and America. Some have been published in print or on-line; some are appearing here...

Blending personal memoir with reportage, Surrender is a narrative nonfiction work on the changing landscape of the West and the scavenger, rewilder and ecosexual communities, inspired by a two-year stay...

In a world that demands faith in progress and growth, Limbo is a companion for the stuck, the isolated, delayed, stranded and those in the dark. Fusing memoir with a...

With Attention, Joshua Cohen returns with his first collection of nonfiction, the culmination of two decades of writing and thought about life in the digital age. In essays, memoir, criticism,...

Boldly combining the highly personal with the brilliantly scholarly, In the Dark Room explores the question of how memory works emotionally and culturally. It is narrated through the prism of...

This Young Monster is a hallucinatory celebration of artists who raise hell, transform their bodies, anger their elders and show their audience dark, disturbing things. What does it mean to...

No art has been denounced as often as poetry. It's even bemoaned by poets: 'I, too, dislike it,' wrote Marianne Moore. 'Many more people agree they hate poetry,' Ben Lerner...