€5 off first Book Purchase of €50+ | With Code: CHAPTERSBOOKSTORE
When Brian Dillon was sixteen his mother died and he simply gave up all schoolwork. While he courted exam failure, his real education was going on elsewhere: with books, music, films and television. When at last he made it to university, his head was already full of avant-garde writing, art and ideas. Could academia live up to the hopes and dreams he had invested in it? Halfway through college his father died, and the stakes of reading and writing seemed even higher. Ambivalence explores what learning meant to its author, what it enabled and denied, between the ages of seventeen and twenty-six, when he left his native Dublin. It's at once a memoir of that city in the 1980s and 1990s, an uncynical portrait of the adolescent and early-adult mind, and an intimate defence of radical thinking about literature and life.
In vivid present-tense fragments, Dillon describes his first encounters with writers such as Virginia Woolf, Walter Benjamin, Samuel Beckett, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida. He recalls being seduced by ambivalence, ambiguity and androgyny - on the page and in the life he hoped his reading would transfigure. The era he describes seemed to demand new ways of thinking about aesthetics and politics. Today, when rights are fragile, arts and humanities attacked, and students dismissed as radicals or narcissists, Ambivalence is an argument for the poetic and revolutionary force of changing yourself and even the world by changing what you know.
- Publisher Name:Fitzcarraldo Editions
- ISBN: 9781804272473
- Author:Dillon, Brian
- Publication Date:2026-05-07
If you are not satisfied with your order in any way, get in touch. We have an excellent customer service record and we will do our best to ensure you are pleased with your purchase.
We are happy to refund a product if it is defective, within 30 days of purchase upon the return of your product. If you return a product to us and request a refund due to an error on our part we will be happy to pay for the postage cost to return it to us.
To be eligible for a return, your item must be in the same condition that you received it, unworn or unused & unread, and in its original packaging. You’ll also need the receipt or proof of purchase.
Please note, if you are requesting a refund based on an issue with condition we kindly ask you to provide a photo in order for us to best advise a suitable resolution.
To start a return, you can contact us at shop@chaptersbookstore.com. If your return is accepted, we’ll send you a return shipping label, as well as instructions on how and where to send your package. Items sent back to us without first requesting a return will not be accepted.
You can always contact us for any return question at shop@chaptersbookstore.com.
Damages and issues
Please inspect your order upon reception and contact us immediately if the item is defective, damaged or if you receive the wrong item, so that we can evaluate the issue and make it right.
Exceptions / non-returnable items
Certain types of items cannot be returned, like custom products or special orders. Unfortunately, we cannot accept returns on sale items or gift cards.
Exchanges
The fastest way to ensure you get what you want is to return the item you have, and once the return is accepted, make a separate purchase for the new item.
Refunds
We will notify you once we’ve received and inspected your return, and let you know if the refund was approved or not. If approved, you’ll be automatically refunded on your original payment method. Please remember it can take some time for your bank or credit card company to process and post the refund too.
Free Delivery in the Republic Of Ireland on all orders over €30. Standard Delivery Charge in Republic of Ireland of €5 for all orders below €30.
Delivery is subject to warehouse availability. Out-of-stock items will be shipped as soon as possible, upon arrival from the manufacturer/publisher. Please take shipping time into consideration.
