Out of Egypt by André Aciman

$12.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: very good

'[A] mesmerizing portrait of a now vanished world. Aciman's story of Alexandria is the story of his own family, a Jewish family with Italian and Turkish roots that tied its future to Egypt and made its home there for three generations, only to find itself peremptorily expelled by the Government in the e arly 1960's. It is the story of a fractious clan of dreamers and con men and the emotional price they would pay for exile, the story of a young boy's coming of age and his memories of the city he loved in his youth. Writing in lucid, lyrical prose, Mr. Aciman does an exquisite job of conjuring up the daily rhythms and rituals of his family's life: their weekly trips to the movies, their daily jaunts to the beach, their internecine squabbles over everything from religion to money to the pronunciation of words. There are some wonderfully vivid scenes here, as strange and marvelous as something in Garcia Marquez, as comical and surprising as something in Chekhov.' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times ...Show more

Paula by Isabel Allende

$8.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: good

In December 1991, Isabel Allende's daughter Paula, aged 26 fell gravely ill and sank into a coma. This book was written during the interminable hours the novelist spent in the corridors of the Madrid hospital, in her hotel room and beside Paula's bed during the summer and autumn of 1992. Faced with the loss of her child, Isabel Allende turned to storytelling, to sustain her own spirit and to convey to her daughter the will to wake up, to survive. The story she tells is that of her own life, her family history and the tragedy of her nation, Chile, in the years leading up to Pinochet's brutal military coup. ...Show more

Maurice Gee by Bill Manhire

$12.00 NZD

Category: New Zealand Literature | Series: New Zealand Writers & their Work | Reading Level: very good

In this biography of the eminent New Zealand author Maurice Gee, Manhire traces a career that has included major literary awards as well as a popular television serial of Gee's Under the Mountain. Among Gee's other works are a trilogy for children, which includes The Halfmen of O, the 1983 New Zealand C hildren's Book of the Year. As part of a series on New Zealand writers, this volume contributes to the growing interest in this vital new literary movement. ...Show more

The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath by Ronald Hayman

$10.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: very good

Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk

$12.00 NZD

Category: Middle East

A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world's great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refra cted by memory and the melancholy-or "h"u"z"u"n-" that all "Istanbullus" share: the sadness that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire. With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from his glamorous, unhappy parents to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking the Bosphorus; from the dawning of his self-consciousness to the writers and painters-both Turkish and foreign-who would shape his consciousness of his city. Like Joyce's Dublin and Borges' Buenos Aires, Pamuk's "Istanbul "is a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving. ...Show more

My Century by Günter Grass

$12.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: very good

In a work of great originality, Germany's most eminent writer examines the victories and terrors of the twentieth century, a period of astounding change for mankind. Great events and seemingly trivial occurrences, technical developments and scientific achievements, war and disasters, and new beginnings, all unfold to display our century in its glory and grimness. A rich and lively display of Grass's extraordinary imagination, the 100 interlinked stories in this volume-one for each year from 1900 to 1999-present a historical and social portrait for the millennium, a tale of our times in all its grandeur and all its horror. ...Show more

Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead by Paula Byrne

$16.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: good-very good

A terrifically engaging and original biography about one of England's greatest novelists, and the glamorous, eccentric, debauched and ultimately tragic family that provided him with the most significant friendships of his life and inspired his masterpiece, "Brideshead Revisited". Evelyn Waugh was alrea dy famous when "Brideshead Revisited" was published in 1945. Written at the height of the war, the novel was, he admitted, of no 'immediate propaganda value'. Instead, it was the story of a household, a family and a journey of religious faith -- an elegy for a vanishing world and a testimony to a family he had fallen in love with a decade earlier. The Lygons of Madresfield were every bit as glamorous, eccentric and compelling as their counterparts, the Marchmains, in "Brideshead Revisited". William Lygon, Earl Beauchamp, was a warm-hearted, generous and unconventional father whose seven children adored him. When he was forced to flee the country by his scheming brother-in-law, his traumatised children stood firmly by him, defying not only the mores of the day, but also their deeply religious mother. In this engrossing biography, bestselling author Paula Byrne takes an innovative approach to her subject, setting out to capture Waugh through the friendships and loves that mattered most to him. She uncovers a man who, far from the snobbish misanthropist of popular caricature, was as loving and complex as the family that inspired him. This brilliantly original biography unlocks for the first time the extent to which Waugh's great novel encoded and transformed his own experiences. In so doing, it illuminates the loves and obsessions that shaped his life, and brings us inevitably to a secret that dared not speak its name. ...Show more

Zami A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography by Audre Lorde

$12.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: very good

The poet, Audre Lorde, depicts her life and examines the influence of various women on her development in this self-named "biomythography".

The Life of John Berryman by John Haffenden

$12.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography

The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

$8.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Series: The\World's Classics Ser. | Reading Level: very good

Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Bront (1857) is a landmark biography of one great Victorian woman novelist by another. Gaskell was a friend of Charlotte Bront , and, having been invited to write the official life, determined both to tell the truth and to honour her friend. She contacted those who had known Charlotte and travelled extensively in England and Belgium to gather material. She wrote from a vivid accumulation of letters, interviews, and observation, establishing the details of Charlotte's life and recreating her background, as well as her interaction with her literary sisters Emily and Anne, her brother and her father. Through an often difficult and demanding process, Gaskell created a vital sense of a life hidden from the world. Charlotte was the most robust, gifted and technically competent of her famous sisters. This study of her by a contemporary is an outstanding biography by any standards: finely written with a self-effacement on the part of the biographer which is all the more remarkable when one considers the success of Mrs. Gaskell's "Cranford", so alive with sunlit gaiety and personal magnetism. This edition is based on the Third Edition of 1857, revised by Gaskell. It has been collated with the manuscript, and the previous two editions, as well as with Charlotte Bront 's letters, and thus offers fuller information about the process of composition than any previous edition. ...Show more

Memoirs by Kingsley Amis

$16.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: very good

Elegant, provocative and hugely entertaining, Kingsley Amis's memoirs are filled with anecdotes, experiences and portraits of famous friends, family, acquaintances (and a few eminent foes). From his childhood days to Oxford and army life, his travels abroad and his years as a successful novelist, Memoir soffers extraordinary insights into a unique literary life. ...Show more

Gorky - A Biography by Henri Troyat; Lowell Bair (Translator)

$14.00 NZD

Category: Literary biography | Reading Level: very good