Written Lives - Softcover

Javier Marias

3.81

1,101 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1841958867 ISBN 13: 9781841958866

Publisher: Canongate Books, 2007

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From Rudyard Kipling to James Joyce, Emily Bront� to Vernon Lee and Henry James to Joseph Conrad, Written Lives throws a new and fascinating light upon these well-known literary figures.

Inspired to revisit the lives of some of the world's most eminent writers of all time, looking at them from the angle of some peculiar detail of their lives, Javier Marias provides a lively and illuminating insight into personalities we thought we knew everything about.

Told with affection and humour, these brief 'written lives' throw a refreshing, and very human, light on authors too-often enshrined, or entombed, within the halo of artistic sainthood.

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Review:

"An artful anecdote to the 'exhaustive and futile erudition' of biography...Mann, Mishima, Joyce and Rilke get short damning shrift. Marias sups from the marrow of their bones with a very long spoon." (The Times)

"Javier Marias is such an elegant, witty and persuasive writer that it is tempting simply to quote him at length, as he carves into the quick of around 30 reputations, in these brief, but far from hasty thumbnail sketches of writers who, for better or worse, largely make up the canon of western literature... One by one, with very few exceptions, most of these "greats" are subjected to close and unflinching examination, and almost nobody comes out out it well..." (The Scotsman)

"Curious, addictive and profound" (Guardian)

"Brief, playful, charming and insightful" (Alan Chadwick Metro)

"[Mar�as is] one of the best contemporary European writers." (JM Coetzee)

From the Back Cover:

EMILY BRONT�, THOMAS MANN, JAMES JOYCE, IVAN TURGENEV, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, ARTHUR RIMBAUD, JOSEPH CONRAD, RAINER MARIA RILKE, HENRY JAMES, WILLIAM FAULKNER . . .

Told with a mixture of affection and humour, these brief 'written lives' throw an unexpected, and very human, light on authors too often enshrined, or entombed, in the halo of artistic sainthood. Here, Javier Mar�as ingeniously revisits the lives and personalities of twenty authors, humanising them and in the process bringing them alive.

'[Mar�as is] one of the best contemporary European writers.'
JM Coetzee

'Brief, playful, charming and insightful.'
Alan Chadwick, Metro

'Sprightly and entertaining . . . Literary scholars will no doubt frown upon this sort of carry-on, but these essays are often as evocative of their subjects and as full of illuminating little nuggets of information as a well-written obituary.'
Peter Parker, Times Literary Supplement

'An artful antidote to the "exhaustive and futile erudition" of biography . . . Mann, Mishima, Joyce and Rilke get short, damning shrift. Mar�as sups from the marrow of their bones with a very long spoon.'
Iain Finlayson, The Times

Translated by Margaret Jull Costa.
Cover illustrations � Andr� Carrilho
Cover design by James Hutcheson

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