In October 2016, Azar Nafisi sat down to write a letter to her father, who had been dead for twelve years. That month was the feverish conclusion to a singularly vitriolic presidential campaign; just weeks later, Donald Trump would be elected president of the United States. The years since have been besieged by crises--from the COVID-19 pandemic to a long-overdue reckoning on race in America to the rise of authoritarianism across the globe. Throughout...

This collection of essays, reviews, diary entries and letters from the late renowned writer includes his thoughts on Salman Rushdie, being spanked by Margaret Thatcher in The House of Lords, and taking his son to the Oscars.

A collection of twenty reviews, essays and pieces of memoir selected from three decades of the author's contributions to the London review of books. Subjects include Robespierre and Danton, the Hite report, Saudi Arabia (where she lived for four years in the 1980s), the Bulger case, John Osborne, the Virgin Mary as well as the pop icon Madonna, and Helen Duncan, Britain's last witch. There are essays about Jane Boleyn, Charles Brandon, Christopher...

"An intimate exploration of the life, craft, and legacy of one of the most revered and influential writers, an artist who continues to inspire fans and creatives to cultivate practices of deep attention, rigorous interrogation and beautiful style. Joan Didion was a writer's writer; not only a groundbreaking journalist, essayist, novelist and screenwriter, but a keen observer who honed her sights on life's telling details. Her insights continue to...

"Dionne Brand explores English and American literature, and the colonial aesthetic that shaped her sense of self and the world, of what was possible and what was not"--

Before there were workshops and degrees, how did aspiring writers learn to write? By reading the work of their predecessors and contemporaries, says author and teacher Prose. Prose invites you on a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters. She reads the very best writers and discovers why their work has endured. She takes pleasure in the magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; she is moved...

"Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Humanities Medal, presents a thrilling, radiant interpretation of the first book of the Bible"--

"Mainly intended for readers who have little sense of what the Talmud actually is, Kirsch explores the Talmud as a critic and journalist. Maybe the best way to describe this book is as a kind of travelogue--a report on what Kirsch saw during his seven-and-a-half-year journey through the Talmud"--

Discusses several stories in the Old Testament of the Bible which deal with sex, violence, and scandal which are frequently suppressed or mistranslated. Places each story within the political and social context of its time, explores why it was written down and added to the Bible, and why it was originally censored. Also includes a section titled "Who really wrote the Bible?"

"From the award-winning biographer of Chaucer, the story of his most popular and scandalous character, from the Middle Ages to #MeToo Ever since her triumphant debut in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognizably real woman in English literature, has obsessed readers-from Shakespeare to James Joyce, Voltaire to Pasolini, Dryden to Zadie Smith. Few literary characters have led such colourful lives or matched...