"Suicide," writes the notes English poet and critic A. Alvarez, "has permeated Western culture like a dye that cannot be washed out." Although the aims of this compelling, compassionate work are broadly cultural and literary, the narrative is rooted in personal experience: it begins with a long memoir of Sylvia Plath, and ends with an account of the author's own suicide attempt. Within this dramatic framework, Alvarez launches his enquiry into the final taboo of human behavior, and traces changing attitudes towards suicide from the perspective of literature. He follows the black thread...
"Suicide," writes the notes English poet and critic A. Alvarez, "has permeated Western culture like a dye that cannot be washed out." Although the aim...
In this powerfully written book, A. Alvarez examines night in all its aspects. How do we light it? How do we inhabit it and make it safe? In what "languages" do we dream? The search moves from the neon-lit brilliance of Las Vegas to the shadowy underworld patrolled by the police. We visit a sleep laboratory, where scientists try to understand what happens to our bodies and in our brains when sleep claims us. Alvarez shows how "night horrors" inspired and terrified Coleridge, how dreams liberated the minds of Stevenson and the Surrealists, and how his own childhood fears provided a gateway to...
In this powerfully written book, A. Alvarez examines night in all its aspects. How do we light it? How do we inhabit it and make it safe? In what "lan...
Tete-Michel Kpomassie was a teenager in Togo when he discovered a book about Greenland and knew that he must go there. Working his way north over nearly a decade, Kpomassie finally arrived in the country of his dreams. This brilliantly observed and superbly entertaining record of his adventures among the Inuit is a testament both to the wonderful strangeness of the human species and to the surprising sympathies that bind us all."
Tete-Michel Kpomassie was a teenager in Togo when he discovered a book about Greenland and knew that he must go there. Working his way north over near...
Feeding the Rat is the story of an extraordinary man: climbing legend Mo Anthoine, who found his greatest joy in adventures that tested the limits of human endurance. That passion for "feeding the rat" made him the unsung hero of dozens of horrifying epics in the mountains, including the famous Ogre expedition that almost killed Doug Scott and Sir Chris Bonington. The book is also the story of the extraordinary friendship between Mo Anthoine and A. Alvarez the distinguished poet, journalist, and critic whose deeply moving portrait of his longtime climbing partner is a classic of adventure...
Feeding the Rat is the story of an extraordinary man: climbing legend Mo Anthoine, who found his greatest joy in adventures that tested the limits of ...