Fresh out of college in New England, a young woman returns home to New Orleans and is quickly pulled back into the city’s “wastrel-youth contingent” in this cult-classic novel of love and decadence, now with a new introduction.Nancy Lemann’s voice is one of the most unusual in American fiction, unabashedly digressive, weirdly and wonderfully confiding, as witty as it is melancholy, an endless surprise. Hers is a voice born of and at odds with her native New Orleans...

With an introduction by Geoff Dyer and personal insights into how some of the most internationally known authors have crafted their best loved works, How to write fiction is a must-read for every aspiring fiction writer. Comprehensive exercises by Kate Grenville to accompany each stage of the writing process will help to embed your learning as your novel progresses.Chapters are:Jill Dawson on Getting startedAndrew Miller on CharacterRachel Cusk on Point of ViewMeg Rosoff on VoiceDBC Pierre...

Anthony and Gloria are the essence of Jazz Age glamour. A brilliant and magnetic couple, they fling themselves at life with an energy that is thrilling. New York is a playground where they dance and drink for days on end. Their marriage is a passionate theatrical performance; they are young, rich, alive and lovely and they intend to inherit the earth.But as money becomes tight, their marriage becomes impossible. And with their inheritance still distant, Anthony ang Gloria must grow...

In the winter of 1984, Sharon Nicorvo was violently raped while delivering pizza to Fort Monmouth Army Base in New Jersey. At the same time, her seven-year-old son Jay was being subjected to repeated and secret sexual abuse by his babysitter. Best Copy Available delves into these devastating events and their long aftermath. Thirty years later, Nicorvo receives a photocopy of the criminal investigation report documenting that brutal night. This report offers a primer to better unde...

You could describe D.H. Lawrence as the great multi-instrumentalist among the great writers of the twentieth century. He was a brilliant, endlessly controversial novelist who transformed, for better and for worse, the way we write about sex and emotions; he was a wonderful poet; he was an essayist of burning curiosity, expansive lyricism, odd humor, and radical intelligence, equaled, perhaps, only by Virginia Woolf. Here Geoff Dyer, one of the finest essayists of our day, draws on the whol...

Writers from Alice Walker to Michael Ondaatje to Claire Messud share their thoughts on one of the most vital gatherings of writers and readers in the world.The Palestine Festival of Literature was established in 2008 by authors Ahdaf Soueif, Brigid Keenan, Victoria Brittain and Omar Robert Hamilton. Bringing writers to Palestine from all corners of the globe, it aimed to break the cultural siege imposed by the Israeli military occupation, to strengthen artistic lin...

Raymond Williams made a central contribution to the intellectual culture of the Left in the English-speaking world. He was also one of the key figures in the foundation of cultural studies in Britain, which turned critical skills honed on textual analysis to the examination of structures and forms of resistance apparent in everyday life. Politics and Letters is a volume of interviews with Williams, conducted by New Left Review, designed to bring into clear focus the major...

Fresh out of college in New England, a young woman returns home to New Orleans and is quickly pulled back into the city’s “wastrel-youth contingent” in this cult-classic novel of love and decadence, now with a new introduction.Nancy Lemann’s voice is one of the most unusual in American fiction, unabashedly digressive, weirdly and wonderfully confiding, as witty as it is melancholy, an endless surprise. Hers is a voice born of and at odds with her native New Orleans...

In eight poetically charged vignettes, Geoff Dyer skillfully evokes the music and the men who shaped modern jazz. Drawing on photos, anecdotes, and, most important, the way he hears the music, Dyer imaginatively reconstructs scenes from the embattled lives of some of the greats: Lester Young fading away in a hotel room; Charles Mingus storming down the streets of New York on a too-small bicycle; Thelonious Monk creating his own private language on the piano. However, music is the driving f...

‘Moving, atmospheric, truthful, perceptive and hilariously funny’ Tessa Hadley‘An irresistible writer’ Richard FordBorn in 1958, the only child of a dinner lady and a sheet-metal worker, Geoff Dyer grew up in a world shaped by memories of shortages and the Second World War. But far from being a story of hardship overcome, Homework is a celebration of opportunities afforded by the post-war settlement.It captures his time at p...

A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK'Quite possibly the best living writer in Britain' Daily TelegraphMuch attention has been paid to so-called late style – but what about last style? When does last begin? How early is late? When does the end set in?In this endlessly stimulating investigation, Geoff Dyer sets his own encounter with late middle age against the last days and last achievements of writers, painters, athletes...

A funny, fascinating and personal look at 100 years of history in the BBC archivesHistorian Greg Jenner uses a random date generator to visit somewhere in the BBC's vast archives of remarkable sound clips from the last 100 years. Using that clip as a jumping-off point to explore what has changed between then and now, Greg talks to experts and those connected to the archived people, places, and ideas, including Stephen Fry, writer Naomi Alderman, playwright Nell Ley...