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Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > Essays, journals, letters & other prose works
HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'Alas that mortals Should blame the gods! From us, they say, All evils come. Yet they themselves It is who through defiant deeds Bring sorrow on them-far more sorrow Than fate would have them bear.' Attributed to the blind Greek poet, Homer, The Odyssey is an epic tale about cunning and strength of mind. It takes its starting point ten years after the fall of the city of Troy and follows its Greek warrior hero Odysseus as he tries to journey to his home of Ithaca in northwest Greece after the Greek victory over the Trojans. On his travels, Odysseus comes across surreal islands and foreign lands where he is in turn challenged and supported by those that he meets on his travels as he attempts to find his way back home in order to vanquish those who threaten his estate. In turn, his son Telemachus has to grow up quickly as he attempts to find his father and protect his mother from her suitors. Dealing with the universal themes of temptation and courage, the epic journey that Odysseus undertakes is as meaningful today as it was almost 3,000 years ago when the story was composed.
Moments of Being contains Virginia Woolf's only autobiographical
writing: "By far the most important book about Virginia
Woolf...that has appeared since her death" [Angus Wilson, Observer
(London)]. Edited and with an Introduction by Jeanne Schulkind;
Index.
'Ought to become a classic. It is an enshrinement of [Meades's] intense baroque and catholic cleverness' Roger Lewis, The Times 'One of the foremost prose stylists of his age in any register . . . Probably we don't deserve Meades, a man who apparently has never composed a dull paragraph' Steven Poole, Guardian 'There are more gems in this wonderful book than I could cram into a dozen of these columns' Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph 'Such a useful and important critic . . . He is very much on the reader's side, bringing his full wit to bear on every single thing he writes' Nicholas Lezard, Spectator This landmark publication collects three decades of writing from one of the most original, provocative and consistently entertaining voices of our time. Anyone who cares about language and culture should have this book in their life. Thirty years ago, Jonathan Meades published a volume of reportorial journalism, essays, criticism, squibs and fictions called Peter Knows What Dick Likes. The critic James Wood was moved to write: 'When journalism is like this, journalism and literature become one.' Pedro and Ricky Come Again is every bit as rich and catholic as its predecessor. It is bigger, darker, funnier and just as impervious to taste and manners. It bristles with wit and pin-sharp eloquence, whether Meades is contemplating northernness in a German forest or hymning the virtues of slang. From the indefensibility of nationalism and the ubiquitous abuse of the word 'iconic', to John Lennon's shopping lists and the wine they call Black Tower, the work assembled here demonstrates Meades's unparalleled range and erudition, with pieces on cities, artists, sex, England, France, concrete, faith, politics, food, history and much, much more.
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 'Brilliant for anyone wanting a better understanding of mental health' ZOE BALL 'This amazing book will change your life' ELTON JOHN 'Eye-opening' GUARDIAN 'Brilliant, stimulating, radical' MATT HAIG 'Wonderful' HILLARY CLINTON 'A game-changer' DAVINA MCCALL 'Extraordinary' DR MAX PEMBERTON 'Beautiful' RUSSELL BRAND Depression and anxiety are now at epidemic levels. Why? Across the world, scientists have uncovered evidence for nine different causes. Some are in our biology, but most are in the way we are living today. Lost Connections offers a radical new way of thinking about this crisis. It shows that once we understand the real causes, we can begin to turn to pioneering new solutions - ones that offer real hope.
Usman Khan was convicted of terrorism-related offences at age 20, and sent to high-security prison. He was released eight years later, and allowed to travel to London for one day, to attend an event marking the fifth anniversary of a prison education programme he participated in. On 29 November, 2019, he sat with others at Fishmongers' Hall, some of whom he knew. Then he went to the bathroom to retrieve the things he had hidden there: a fake bomb vest and two knives, which he taped to his wrists. That day, he killed two people: Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt. Preti Taneja taught fiction writing in prison for three years. Merritt oversaw her program; Khan was one of her students. 'It is the immediate aftermath,' Taneja writes. '"I am living at the centre of a wound still fresh." The I is not only mine. It belongs to many.' In this searching lament by the award-winning author of We That Are Young, Taneja interrogates the language of terror, trauma and grief; the fictions we believe and the voices we exclude. Contending with the pain of unspeakable loss set against public tragedy, she draws on history, memory, and powerful poetic predecessors to reckon with the systemic nature of atrocity. Blurring genre and form, Aftermath is a profound attempt to regain trust after violence and to recapture a politics of hope through a determined dream of abolition.
Briewe van Peter Blum bevat briewe wat die digter tussen 1955 en 1966 aan literere persoonlikhede van sy tyd geskryf het. Die briewe van die digter Peter Blum, wat beskou word as die voorloper van Breyten Breytenbach, is geskryf aan bekende letterkundiges soos D J Opperman, W E G Louw, Van Wyk Louw, Ernst Lindenberg, Jan Rabie, Uys Krige, Barend Toerien.
HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'Clanless, lawless, homeless is he who is in love with civil war, that brutal ferocious thing.' The epic poem The Iliad begins nine years after the beginning of the Trojan War and describes the great warrior Achilles and the battles and events that take place as he quarrels with the King Agamemnon. Attributed to Homer, The Iliad, along with The Odyssey, is still revered today as the oldest and finest example of Western Literature.
Following his 2016 smash hit Anatomy of a Song, acclaimed music journalist Marc Myers collects fifty-five new oral histories of iconic songs from his popular Wall Street Journal column Songs that sell the most copies become hits, but some of those hits become something more--iconic recordings that not only inspire a generation but also change the direction of music. In Anatomy of 55 More Songs, based on his column for the Wall Street Journal, music journalist and historian Marc Myers tells the story behind fifty-five rock, pop, R&B, country, and soul-gospel hits through intimate interviews with the artists who wrote and recorded them. Part oral history, part musical analysis, Anatomy of 55 More Songs ranges from Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Bad Moon Rising" to Dionne Warwick's "Walk On By," The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations," and Black Sabbath's "Paranoid." Bernie Taupin recalls how he wrote the lyrics to Elton John's "Rocket Man;" Joan Jett remembers channeling her rage against how she had been unfairly labeled and treated as a female rocker into "Bad Reputation;" and Ozzy Osbourne, Elvis Costello, Bob Weir, Sheryl Crow, Alice Cooper, Roberta Flack, John Mellencamp, Keith Richards, Carly Simon, and many others reveal the emotions and technique behind their major works. Through an absorbing chronological, song-by-song analysis of the most memorable post-war hits, Anatomy of 55 More Songs provides a sweeping look at the evolution of pop music between 1964 and today. This book will change how you listen to music and evaluate the artists who create it.
Still, what does that matter? I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart." Anne Frank The Diary of Anne Frank is the story of a 13=year-old Jewish girl and her family who are forced into hiding by the Nazis during World War II.
A hundred years ago, on the night of 3 October 1922, a thirty-two-year-old clerk named Percy Thompson was stabbed to death as he walked home to his suburban villa in Ilford. With him was his wife, twenty-eight-year-old Edith. His killer was Edith's lover: Frederick Bywaters, a merchant seaman aged twenty. Bywaters was hanged for murder on 9 January 1923. So too was Edith Thompson. There was no evidence, of any kind, that she was involved with the killing. What condemned Edith were the letters that she had written to her lover, which were interpreted by the law as incitement to murder. These letters are remarkable documents. Charged with the vitality of Edith's voice, they are moving, perplexing, maddening, banal, spectacularly sensual, infused with a stream-of-consciousness immediacy. And they have never been collected in print, until now. In Au Revoir Now Darlint, Laura Thompson - author of the CWA Gold Dagger-shortlisted Rex vs Edith Thompson - gathers the letters together alongside illuminating commentary to tell the story of an ordinary life and an extraordinary imagination that ultimately led to appalling tragedy.
Hazel Hendry is a remarkable woman. She worked tirelessly raising money for charities, and particularly for TEARFUND, including walking the form of a cross from John Oa Groats to Lands End and from Ramsgate to Fishguard in Wales. When the Croatian War began, the founder of TEARFUND, George Hoffman, told her, a Hazel, the people of Croatia need your helpa . So she raised money to send over 50 lorries, full of much needed supplies of food, furniture, medical equipment and toiletries, into Croatia. She travelled personally with many of them during and after the war. Hazel delivered aid right to the Front Line risking her life to help people who had lost their homes, livelihoods, and families. This book is about her experiences during those dangerous years, and the people who helped her and those that she helped. It is based on journals which she kept at the time and later recollections of particular people and events. As such, it is a vivid account of how the Croations in the War Zone suffered at the hands of the Chetniks who would attack their villages while leaving neighbouring villages in Croatia where Serbs lived unscathed. Some of the details that she recalls are not for the squeamish, but the way in which her faith supported her throughout this period shines through on every page.
In this inspiring masterpiece, bestselling author Susan Cain shows the power of the "bittersweet" -- the outlook that values the experiences of loss and pain, which can lead to growth and beauty. Understanding bittersweetness can change the way we work, the way we create and the way we love. Each chapter helps us navigate an issue that define our lives, from love to death and from authenticity to creativity. Using examples ranging from music and cinema to parenting and business, as well as her own life and the latest academic research, she shows how understanding bittersweetness will allow us, in a flawed world, to accept the loss of past identities; to fully embrace the loves we have; and to weather life's transitions. Bittersweet reveals that vulnerability and even melancholy can be strengths, and that embracing our inevitable losses makes us more human and more whole. This is a book for those who have felt a piercing joy at the beauty of the world; who react intensely to art and nature; and in a culture that celebrates toughness, who yearn for a wiser and more meaningful world. For bittersweetness is the hidden source of our love stories, moonshots and masterpieces.
In Ten Trips neuropsychologist Andy Mitchell takes ten different psychedelic drugs in ten different settings, puncturing the hype while providing the fullest picture yet of their limitlessly fascinating possibilities. Once demonised and still largely illegal, psychedelic drugs are now officially a 'breakthrough therapy', used to treat depression, trauma and addiction and to enhance well-being. But as neuropsychologist Andy Mitchell shows in this deeply serious yet wildly entertaining investigation, this approach misses what is so strange and valuable about them: the psychedelic experience itself. In Ten Trips he takes ten different compounds, some famous, others obscure, journeying from a neuroimaging lab in London to the Colombian Amazon via Silicon Valley and his friend's basement kitchen. His encounters with scientists and gangsters, venture capitalists and con-men, psychonauts and shamans provide a panoramic view of psychedelics today: their capacity for healing but also trauma, for transcendence and corruption, profundity and hilarity. By removing psychedelics from their indigenous and underground cultures, we risk losing the very things we need to harness them. To make them safe or normal might ultimately destroy what makes them potent. That potential is indeed great, not as an antidote to mental illness - none exists - but as a way of changing our whole perspective on mental health and flourishing. Ten Trips is a dazzling, perception-shifting odyssey that shows how psychedelics can re-enchant us with the world.
The first general nonfiction title in thirty years from a giant of American letters, The Search for the Genuine is a sparkling, definitive collection of Jim Harrison's essays and journalism--some never before published New York Times bestselling author Jim Harrison (1937-2016) was a writer with a poet's economy of style and trencherman's appetites and ribald humor. In The Search for the Genuine, a collection of new and previously published essays, the giant of letters muses on everything from grouse hunting fishing to Zen Buddhism and matters of the spirit, including reported pieces on Yellowstone and shark-tagging in the open ocean, commentary on writers from Bukowski to Neruda to Peter Matthiessen, and a heartbreaking essay on life-- and, for those attempting to cross in the ever-more-dangerous gaps, death--on the US/Mexico border. Written with Harrison's trademark humor, compassion, and full-throated zest for life, this chronicle of a modern bon vivant is a feast for fans who may think they know Harrison's nonfiction, from a true "American original" (San Francisco Chronicle).
In 1981, when he was thirty-three and had just caught what was then the largest British carp, Chris Yates wondered if he could now dream of capturing Redmire's Pool's real monster: the King. But far from the King itself, it was the idea of such a leviathan that hooked Chris that summer, playing him along the banks for one final season before releasing him back into the world. Chris's account of those pivotal months - originally published as The Lost Diary - recounts the final reckoning of an angler's long relationship with a beloved and mysterious pool. It is also a magical record of both familiar and freshly discovered waters, meetings with new friends, and unexpected encounters with creatures other than fish and presences that are not quite human. |
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