Memory - Hardcover

Byatt, A S; Harvey Wood, Harriet

3.73

26 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0701177373 ISBN 13: 9780701177379

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2008

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'You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realise that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all... Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.'

Luis Bu�uel, Memoirs

'It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,' the Queen remarked.

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

This intriguing anthology introduces us to arguments and experiences, evocative moments and hard scientific debate on the subject of memory, the thread that holds our lives and our history together. With an introduction by A.S. Byatt, the book is arranged in themed sections, and includes specially commissioned essays by writers with expertise in different fields - from 'Memory and Evolution' by Patrick Bateson to 'Memory and Forgetting' by the biographer Richard Holmes, and an account of the chemistry of the brain, by Steven Rose. The fascinating extracts move through the ages from Plato and Aristotle to Montaigne and Shakespeare, Voltaire and Hume, Wordsworth and Proust, Freud and Virginia Woolf, Jorge Luis Borges, W.G. Sebald and Haruki Murakami. Stimulating and provocative and often profoundly moving, Memory is a book to treasure - and remember.

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Review:

`AS Byatt and Harriet Harvey Wood have been open-minded and inclusive in their editorial approach'.
-- Time Out

`a book for the magpies among us, designed to be dipped in to time after time ... absorbing anthology' -- Sunday Herald

`a hugely entertaining and thought-provoking anthology...' -- The Herald

`juxtaposes gralcing insights with painstaking research... something of the combined tastes and talents that have gone into this fascinating compilation.' -- FT

`rich and thought-provoking anthology.' -- The Times

'...admirably balances the fanciful with the profound, the analytical with the intuitive...'
-- The Liberal, Hugh Lawrence-Tancred

'one to dip into again and again' -- Express

Book Description:

A packed, provocative anthology on a subject close to us all, with analyses of memory (and forgetting) ranging from childhood recollections to the latest neuroscience, Plato to Freud, medieval poets to London taxi drivers.

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