Things I Don’t Want to Know is a unique response to George Orwell from one of our most vital contemporary writers. Taking Orwell’s famous list of motives for writing as the jumping-off point for a sequence of thrilling reflections on the writing life, this is a perfect companion not just to Orwell’s essay, but also to Levy’s own, essential oeuvre.
Endlessly surprising and entertaining, Humiliation is an essay-in-fragments unlike any other you will read on the human condition. With a disarming blend of personal reflection and cultural commentary, Wayne Koestenbaum walks us – at times cajoles us – through a spectrum of mortifications, in history, current events, literature, art, music, film, and in his own life. The book’s timing, the New York Times tells us, “is flawless.”
The great Victorian William Morris was fascinated by Iceland, which inspired him to write one of the masterpieces of travel literature. Poet Lavinia Greenlaw follows in his footsteps, combining excerpts from his Icelandic writings with her own eye-witness response to the country and creates a highly original meditation – part memoir, part prose poem, part criticism, part travelogue.
