A response to George Orwell’s Why I Write

‘Perhaps when Orwell described sheer egoism as a necessary quality for a writer, he was not thinking about the sheer egoism of a female writer. Even the most arrogant female writer has to work over time to build an ego that is robust enough to get her through January, never mind all the way to December.’ Deborah Levy

‘Levy’s strength is her originality of thought and expression.’Jeanette Winterson

To write a book in which every sentence is a first sentence. To write a book in which every sentence is as good as the first sentence.

'[I]ntelligent, lyrical, prosaic, theoretical, pragmatic, funny, serious. His best prose does everything at once.' James Wood, New Yorker

Joshua Cohen was born in New Jersey in 1980. He is the author of three novels – Witz, Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto, and A Heaven of Others – and a collection of short fiction, Four New Messages. His writing has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, the London Review of Books, the New York Times, the Paris Review, and elsewhere. Cohen lives in New York City.

Francis Bacon was one of the iconic figures of modern art, a painter who transformed the way we see and experience the human body. Mirroring Bacon’s famous triptychs, Jonathan Littell’s three essays engage with the artist’s contorted figures and portraits, his screaming popes and apes, his flanks of beef and his umbrellas. Beautifully illustrated with 25 colour images.

In Junkspace (2001), architect Rem Koolhaas itemised in delirious detail how our cities are being overwhelmed. His celebrated jeremiad is here updated and twinned with Running Room, a fresh response from architectural critic Hal Foster.

Blending confessional criticism and anthropological autobiography, David Shields explores the power of literature to make life endurable. How Literature Saved My Life chronicles the author’s character flaws and despairs, using the crucible of self to show how confessional reading and writing are the foundation of a practice that helps us transcend sorrow, loss, and loneliness.

‘We need to reclaim the nation state as a public good.’ - Michael Gove

John Banville introduces Hubert Butler’s masterful essays on Europe, following his volume of Butler’s essays on Ireland, The Eggman and the Fairies.

‘The breadth of Butler's interests and concerns is remarkable, even for a writer whose career spanned the greater part of a tumultuous century ... whether he is writing about wartime atrocities or local history, the slaughter of the Jews or Celtic hagiography, he speaks with authenticity. In this he is a member of a dying species.' – John Banville

A hardback edition of W.G. Sebald’s classic essay encompassing this great author’s horror at the Allied destruction of German cities towards the end of the Second World War and his bafflement at German collective amnesia.

‘Is literary greatness still possible? … One of the few answers available to English-language readers is the work of W. G. Sebald.’ - Susan Sontag, TLS

The n+1 Anthology is a selection from the best of n+1, a Brooklyn-based magazine of politics, literature and culture, founded in 2004 and published thrice yearly. Driven by a sense of bravado and grievance, n+1is leading the generational struggle against laziness and cynicism, to raise once again the banners of creative enthusiasm and intellectual engagement. 

‘n+1 is rigorous, curious and provocative. Intelligent thought is not dead in New York. It has simply moved to Brooklyn.’ – Malcolm Gladwell