Oliver Sacks, one of the great humanists of our age – who describes himself in these pages as a ‘philosophical physician’ and an ‘astronomer of the inward’ – wrote to an eclectic array of family and friends. Most were scientists, artists, and writers: Francis Crick, W. H. Auden, Björk. But many of the most eloquent letters in this collection are addressed to the ordinary people who wrote to him with their odd symptoms and questions, to whom he responds with a sense of generosity and wonder.
With some correspondents, Sacks shares his struggle for recognition and acceptance both as a physician and as a gay man, providing intimate accounts as well of his passions for competitive weightlifting, motorcycles, botany, and music. With others, he chronicles his penchant for testing the boundaries of authority, the discovery of his writer’s voice, and his explosive seasons of discovery with the patients who populate his book Awakenings.
His descriptions of travels as a young man and the extraordinary people he encounters can be lyrical, ferocious, penetrating and hilarious. Many of his musings include the first detailed sketches of an essay forming in his mind, or miniature case histories rivalling those in his beloved essay collections.
Sensitively selected and introduced by Kate Edgar, Sacks’s longtime editor, the letters trace the arc of a remarkable life and reveal an often surprising portrait of Sacks as he wrestles with the workings of his own brain and mind.
Moving beyond travelogue, V. S. Naipaul's The Masque of Africa considers the effects of belief (in indigenous animisms, the foreign religions of Christianity and Islam, the cults of leaders and mythical history) upon the progress of African civilization.
Beginning in Uganda, at the centre of the continent, Naipaul’s journey takes in Ghana and Nigeria, the Ivory Coast and Gabon, and ends, as the country does, in South Africa.
Focusing upon the theme of belief – though sometimes the political or economical realities are so overwhelming that they have to be taken into account – Naipaul examines the fragile but enduring quality of the old world of magic. To witness the ubiquity of such ancient ritual, to be given some idea of its power, was to be taken far back to the beginning of things. To reach that beginning was the purpose of this book.
A ruthless satire of academic life, The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury is a witty campus novel and one of the most influential books of the 1970s.
Take a Valium. Have a party. Go on a demo. Shoot a soldier. Make a bang. Bed a friend. That’s your problem-solving system . . . But haven’t we tried all that?
Howard Kirk, native son of the Swinging Sixties, radical university lecturer, and one half of a very modern marriage, is throwing a party. The night will have all sorts of repercussions: for Henry Beamish, Howard’s desperate and easily neglected friend, and for Howard’s wife, promiscuous ’70s liberal and exhausted victim of motherhood.
Funny, disconcerting and provocative, this fiftieth anniversary edition of Bradbury's classic novel brilliantly satirizes a world of academic power struggles as his anti-hero seduces his way around campus. It also reveals a marriage in crisis and demonstrates the fragility of the human heart.
Now part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.
The final novel in Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove quartet, Streets of Laredo is an exhilarating and achingly poignant tale of heroism and friendship, set in the American West.
Captain Woodrow Call, Gus McCrae’s old partner, once a youthful Texas Ranger, is now a bounty hunter hired to track down a brutal young Mexican bandit. Riding with Call are an Eastern city slicker, a witless deputy, and one of the last members of the Hat Creek outfit, Pea Eye Parker, now married to Lorena – once Gus’s sweetheart.
Their long, perilous chase leads them across the last wild stretches of the West into a hellhole known as Crow Town and, finally, deep into the vast, relentless plains of the Texas frontier.
Now part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.
Taking you deep into the heart of the American West, Dead Man’s Walk is the first book in Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove quartet.
These are the wild days when Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call – heroes of Lonesome Dove – first encounter the untamed frontier that will form their characters.
Not yet twenty, Gus and Call enlist as Texas Rangers under the command of Caleb Cobb, a capricious outlaw determined to seize Santa Fe from the Mexicans. The two young men experience their first great adventure in the barren, empty landscape of the great plains, in which arbitrary violence is the only law – whether from nature, or from those whose territory they must cross in order to reach New Mexico.
Danger, sacrifice and fear test Gus and Call to the limits of endurance, as they seek the strength and courage to survive against almost insurmountable odds in the West of early nineteenth-century America.
Continue the series set in the Wild West with Comanche Moon.
The second book in the Lonesome Dove quartet, Comanche Moon, which follows on from Dead Man’s Walk, follows Rangers Gus and Call in their bitter struggle to protect the advancing West frontier against the defiant Comanches, courageously determined to defend their territory and their way of life. It showcases Larry McMurtry’s strong affinity for the landscape and its inhabitants with a deeply felt lyrical intensity.
On the wild Texas frontier where barbarism and civilization come in many forms, Rangers Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call are pitched into the long, bitter, bloody fighting under the command of Captain Inish Scull.
When Scull’s favourite horse is stolen by the Comanches, he decides to track him down, leaving Gus and Call in charge. However, on their return to Austin, Gus is greeted by the news that his sweetheart is to marry another man and Call finds that the town’s most notorious woman is desperate to settle down with him and become respectable. When Scull’s wealthy wife demands that her errant husband be brought home, with feelings akin to relief the two men set off once more into the vast, untamed plains . . .
Continue the series set in the American West with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove.
Now part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry is a powerful, triumphant, Pulitzer-winning tribute to the American West.
Immerse yourself in the gritty realism of the American frontier in this masterful epic from the screenwriter of Brokeback Mountain. This is the story of a group of audacious cowboys on a perilous cattle drive across the sprawling wilderness, from Texas to Montana, bound by duty and hardened by the relentless frontier.
The third novel in McMurtry’s ‘Lonesome Dove’ quartet depicts an enduring American experience with its triumphs and betrayals, embodying the spirit and drama of the Wild West.
The love story of the century
A man with an Irish accent knocks on Eilis Fiorello’s door on Long Island and in that moment everything changes. Eilis and Tony have built a secure, happy life here since leaving Brooklyn - perhaps a little stifled by the in-laws so close, but twenty years married and with two children looking towards a good future.
And yet this stranger will reveal something that will make Eilis question the life she has created. For the first time in years she suddenly feels very far from home and the revelation will see her turn towards Ireland once again. Back to her mother. Back to the town and the people she had chosen to leave behind. Did she make the wrong choice marrying Tony all those years ago? Is it too late now to take a different path?
Abigail and her brother Benjamin have always been close. To celebrate his birthday, Abigail hires a grand old house and gathers their friends together for a murder mystery party. As the night goes on, they drink too much and play games. Relationships are forged, consolidated or frayed. Someone kisses someone they shouldn’t, someone else’s heart is broken.
In the morning, everyone wakes up – except Benjamin.
Suddenly everything is not quite what it seems. An eminent detective arrives determined to find Benjamin’s killer. The house now has a butler, a gardener and a housekeeper. This is a locked-room mystery, and everyone is a suspect.
As Abigail attempts to fathom her brother’s unexpected death in a world that has been turned upside down, she begins to wonder whether perhaps the true mystery might have been his life . . .
All That Is explores a life unfolding in a world on the brink of change. The life is that of Philip Bowman and we see his formative experiences as a young naval officer in battles off Okinawa, his post-war career as a book editor in New York, his trips to the great European cities - for publishing parties in London, romantic holidays in Paris.
But despite his success, what eludes him is love. His first marriage goes bad, another fails to happen, finally he meets a woman who enthrals him before setting him on a course he could never imagine for himself.
James Salter's dazzling, seductive and haunting novel offers a fiercely intimate account of the great shocks and grand pleasures of being alive.
Northern Iceland, 1829.
A woman condemned to death for murdering her lover.
A family forced to take her in.
A priest tasked with absolving her.
But all is not as it seems, and time is running out: winter is coming, and with it the execution date.
Only she can know the truth. This is Agnes's story . . .
Based on actual events, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent is a dark, thrilling work of historical fiction, and a beautiful and gripping read.
'Intriguing' – Sunday Times
'A rousing read' – Irish Times
'A bright light of Francophone feminism' – New York Times
Renowned journalist Mona Chollet recasts the witch as a powerful role model: an emblem of strength, free to exist beyond the narrow limits society imposes on women.
Taking three archetypes from historic witch hunts – independent women, women who avoid having children and women who embrace ageing – Chollet examines how women today have the same charges levelled against them. She calls for justice in healthcare, challenging the gender imbalance in science and questioning why female bodies åre still controlled by men.
Rich with popular culture, literary references and media insights, In Defence of Witches is a vital addition to the cultural conversation around women, witches and the misogyny that has shaped the world they live in.
With a foreword by Carmen Maria Machado and translated from French by Sophie R. Lewis.
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