Nineteen Seventy Six Penguin Specials by Ragnar Baldursson
$9.99 AUD
Category: Essays
The events of 1976 convulsed China: Mao died, the Gang of Four fell, hundreds of thousands perished in the Tangshan earthquake. Ragnar Baldursson, an idealistic true believer in the Chinese socialist experiment, was one of the few foreigners present to witness these events. Forty years on, living in a v ...Show more
Notes on an Exodus by Richard Flanagan
$10.00 AUD
Category: Essays
Notes on the exodus of refugees from Syria, by Man Booker Prize winner Richard Flanagan. With illustrations from Archibald Prize winner Ben Quilty. In January 2016 Richard Flanagan and Ben Quilty travelled to Lebanon, Greece, and Serbia to follow the river that is the exodus of our age: that of refugees ...Show more
Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change: Seven Continents, Twenty-Five Years by Andrew Solomon
$35.00 AUD
Category: Essays
In 1991 Andrew Solomon rode a tank into Red Square in Moscow with a band of Russian artists protesting the coup after Gorbachev's resignation. In 2002 he was in Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban; in 2014 he travelled to Myanmar to meet ex-political prisoners as the country slowly, fitfully p ...Show more
The Abundance by Annie Dillard
$35.00 AUD
Category: Essays
Annie Dillard has spent a lifetime examining the world around her with eyes wide open, drinking in all things intensely and relentlessly. She conjures currents of magic and wisdom, illuminating the seemingly ordinary moments of a life lived fearlessly - as a breathless teenager, as a roving young adult ...Show more
Peacock and Vine: Fortuny and Morris in Life and at Work by A. S. Byatt
$35.00 AUD
Category: Essays
An alluring and atmospheric enquiry into the creative impulse -- as seen through the work and lives of Mariano Fortuny and William Morris -- by one of our greatest novelists. This ravishing little book, glowing with colour and generously illustrated throughout, opens a window on to the lives, passio ...Show more
So Sad Today: Personal Essays by Melissa Broder
$28.00 AUD
Category: Essays
So sad today? Many are. Melissa Broder is too. How and why did she get to be so sad? And should she stay sad? She asks herself these questions over and over here, turning them into a darkly mesmerising and strangely uplifting reading experience through coruscating honesty and a total lack of self-deceit ...Show more
Quarterly Essay 62: Firing Line: Australia and the Path to War by James Brown
$23.00 AUD
Category: Essays | Series: Quarterly Essay
"Going to war may be the gravest decision a nation and its leaders make. At the moment, Australia is at war with the Islamic State. We also live in a region that has become much more volatile, as China asserts itself and America seeks to hold the line. What is it like to go to war? How do we decide to g ...Show more
We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think Selected Essays by Shirley Hazzard
$56.00 AUD
Category: Essays
Spanning the 1960s to the 2000s, these nonfiction writings showcase Shirley Hazzard's extensive thinking on global politics, international relations, the history and fraught present of Western literary culture, and postwar life in Europe and Asia. They add essential clarity to the themes that dominate h ...Show more
The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America by Martin Amis
$25.00 AUD
Category: Essays | Series: King Penguin S.
With mixed feelings of wonder and trepidation, the brilliant British writer Martin Amis approaches America and introduces this sharp and thoroughly stimulating collection of "American" pieces. From Claus von Bulow to the New Evangelists, little escapes Amis' curiosity.
Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting, and Living with Books by Michael Dirda
$35.95 AUD
Category: Essays
Michael Dirda has been hailed as "the best-read person in America" (The Paris Review) and "the best book critic in America" (The New York Observer). In addition to the Pulitzer Prize he was awarded for his reviews in The Washington Post, he picked up an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America for his ...Show more
Griffith Review 52: Imagining the Future by Julianne & Gleeson, Brendan (ed Schultz
$27.99 AUD
Category: Essays | Series: Griffith REVIEW
AUSTRALIAN politics and national life are trapped in a permanent present. There are few opportunities to imagine the future, and even fewer to create it. Politics, commerce, media all focus relentlessly on the here and now. This breeds a corrosive cynicism. Yet when alternatives are presented they are o ...Show more
Everywhere I Look by Helen Garner
$30.00 AUD
Category: Essays
I pedal over to Kensington just after dark. As I roll along the lane towards the railway underpass, a young Asian woman on her way home from the station walks out of the tunnel towards me. After she passes there’s a stillness, a moment of silent freshness that feels like spring. Helen Garner is one of A ...Show more