The Argonauts - Softcover

Maggie Nelson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0993414915 ISBN 13: 9780993414916

Publisher: Melville House UK, 2016

Synopsis

Nominated for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2017

An intrepid voyage out to the frontiers of the latest thinking about love, language, and family.

A timely and genre-bending memoir that offers fresh and fierce reflections on motherhood, desire, identity and feminism.

At the centre of The Argonauts is the love story between Maggie Nelson and the artist Harry Dodge, who is fluidly gendered. As Nelson undergoes the transformations of pregnancy, she explores the challenges and complexities of mothering and queer family making.

NOMINATED FOR A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD.

NOMINATED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2017.

About this title

Review

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS' CIRCLE AWARD FOR CRITICISM

"The Argonauts rewards us with an expansive way of considering identity, caretaking, and freedom... Maybe it will change the way we think and speak about others and ourselves?" - Emma Watson

"[A] meditation on gender fluidity and motherhood' - New Statesman

'Provocative and passionately brilliant' -Geoff Dyer

'One of the most electrifying writers at work in America today, among the sharpest and most supple thinkers of her generation.' Olivia Laing, author of The Trip to Echo Springs

'Nelson proposes a completely different way of looking at sex and sexuality, child-rearing and childbirth and everything else... [I] absolutely love this book.' - Jenny Turner, London Review of Books

'Always brilliant.' Geoff Dyer, author of Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It

'A complicated, intimate book about motherhood and identity. Perfect for escaping into' Grace Dent, Evening Standard

'I read The Argonauts in one breathless, tearful, mind-blown day and I'm still recovering.' Miranda July, author of The First Bad Man

'Maggie Nelson cuts through our culture's prefabricated structures of thought and feeling with an intelligence whose ferocity is ultimately in the service of love. No piety is safe, no orthodoxy, no easy irony. The scare quotes burn off like fog.' Ben Lerner, author of 10:04

'A superb exploration of the risk and the excitement of change. Thinking and feeling are, for Nelson, mutually necessary processes; the result is an exceptional portrait both of a romantic partnership and of the collaboration between Nelson s mind and heart.' New Yorker

'This book is a life-changer' Carrie Brownstein, The New York Times

'Maggie Nelson slays entrenched notions of gender, marriage, and sexuality with lyricism, intellectual brass, and soul-ringing honesty.' Vanity Fair

'So much writing about motherhood makes the world seem smaller after the child arrives, more circumscribed, as if in tacit fealty to the larger cultural assumptions about moms and domesticity; Nelson's book does the opposite.' Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times Book Review

'In The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson turns 'making the personal public' into a romantic, intellectual wet dream. A gorgeous book, inventive, fearless, and full of heart.' Kim Gordon, author of Girl in a Band

'What a dazzlingly generous, gloriously unpredictable book! Maggie Nelson shows us what it means to be real, offering a way of thinking that is as challenging as it is liberating... Reading The Argonauts made me happier and freer.' --Eula Biss, author of On Immunity

"I also found it to be a quite beautiful book: shimmering with intelligence; fully alive to both the joyful and the difficult part of love; illuminating on motherhood..."--The Times Literary Supplement

'An absolutely extraordinary book... Extremely smart and very moving... Works so perfectly both as a really beautiful piece of memoir writing and also a really smart, intellectual look at gender.' --Anna James, A Case for Books

'The Argonauts offers no easy answers to the questions Nelson poses: but it is moving, in every sense of the word.' --New Statesman

"The Argonauts rewards us with an expansive way of considering identity, caretaking, and freedom... Maybe it will change the way we think and speak about others and ourselves?" - Emma Watson

&quotThis is a book that belongs on the shelves of anyone who desires, especially if what they desire is nothing short of freedom itself." - Guardian

&quotA profound and challenging work that reminds us of the need to ask questions and offer empathy." --The Irish Times

About the Author

Maggie Nelson is a poet, critic, and nonfiction author of books such as The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning, Jane: A Murder and Bluets, She teaches in the School of Critical Studies at CalArts and lives in Los Angeles, California.

About this edition

• Publisher: Melville House UK
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0993414915
• ISBN 13: 9780993414916
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 192