Fitzcarraldo editions london (757 risultati)

Paperback. Condizione: Very Good. With the death of her aunt, Maria Stepanova is left to sift through an apartment full of faded photographs, old postcards, letters, diaries, and heaps of souvenirs: a withered repository of a century of life in Russia. Carefully reassembled with calm, steady hands, these shards tell the story of how a seemingly ordinary Jewish family somehow managed to survive the myriad persecutions and repressions of the last century. In dialogue with writers like Roland Barthes, W. G. Sebald, Susan Sontag and Osip Mandelstam, In Memory of Memory is imbued with rare intellectual curiosity and a wonderfully soft-spoken, poetic voice. Dipping into various forms - essay, fiction, memoir, travelogue and historical documents - Stepanova assembles a vast panorama of ideas and personalities and offers an entirely new and bold exploration of cultural and personal memory. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. …

Paperback. Condizione: Very Good. Flights, a novel about travel in the twenty-first century and human anatomy, is Olga Tokarczuks most ambitious to date. It interweaves travel narratives and reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. From the seventeenth century, we have the story of the Dutch anatomist Philip Verheyen, who dissected and drew pictures of his own amputated leg. From the eighteenth century, we have the story of a North African-born slave turned Austrian courtier stuffed and put on display after his death. In the nineteenth century, we follow Chopins heart as it makes the covert journey from Paris to Warsaw. In the present we have the trials of a wife accompanying her much older husband as he teaches a course on a cruise ship in the Greek islands, and the harrowing story of a young husband whose wife and child mysteriously vanish on a holiday on a Croatian island. With her signature grace and insight, Olga Tokarczuk guides the reader beyond the surface layer of modernity and towards the core of the very nature of humankind. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE'I will write to avenge my people.' It was as a young woman that Annie Ernaux first wrote these words in her diary, giving a name to her purpose in life as a writer. She returns to them in her stirring defence of literature and of political writing in her Nobel Lecture, delivered in Stockholm on 7 December 2022. To write of her own life, she asserts, is to 'shatter the loneliness of experiences endured and repressed'; to mine individual experience is to find collective emancipation. Ernaux's speech is a bold assertion of the capacity of writing to give people a sense of their own worth, and of one writer's commitment to bearing witness to life, its joys and its injustices. Published in book form for the first time, Annie Ernaux's Nobel Lecture, delivered in Stockholm in December 2022, translated by Alison L. Strayer. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. 'If there's any metaphor I would use for the act of writing, it would have to be listening,' says Jon Fosse in A Silent Language, the lecture he delivered after being awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature. When he writes, Fosse explains, he listens for texts that exist somewhere outside of himself in order to transcribe them before they disappear. With reverence and humility, Fosse traces his relationship to writing and celebrates the capacity of language to embrace the mystery, complexity and existential uncertainty of the human experience. 'It is only in the silence that you can hear God's voice,' he says, offering a key to his beloved works of drama and fiction. 'Maybe.' Published in book form for the first time, Jon Fosse's Nobel Lecture, delivered in Stockholm in December 2023, translated by Damion Searls. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. In her spare, stark style, Annie Ernaux documents the desires and indignities of a human heart ensnared in an all-consuming passion. Blurring the line between fact and fiction, she attempts to plot the emotional and physical course of her two-year relationship with a married man where every word, event, and person either provides a connection with her beloved or is subject to her cold indifference. With courage and exactitude, Ernaux seeks the truth behind an existence lived, for a time, entirely for someone else. In her spare, stark style, Annie Ernaux's Simple Passion documents the desires and indignities of a human heart ensnared in an all-consuming passion. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. One Sunday in Yvetot, August 1950. Annie is playing outside in the sun. Her mother steps out of the grocery to chat with a customer, a few metres from her. The two women's conversation is perfectly audible; its scraps become etched forever in Annie's memory. Before she was born, her parents had another daughter. She died at the age of six from diphtheria. Annie will never hear another word from her parents about this unknown sister, nor will she ask them a single question about her: their family unit has formed in the image of its vanished predecessor. In The Other Girl, brilliantly translated for the first time into English by Alison L. Strayer, Annie Ernaux explores the meaning of this family secret, and the insurmountable distance that separates the two sisters. Before she was born, Annie Ernaux's parents had another daughter who died at the age of six from diphtheria. Translated into English for the first time, The Other Girl explores the meaning of this family secret, which Annie only discovered by chance as a child and never discussed with her parents again. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. …

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. In 1963, Annie Ernaux, 23 and unattached, realizes she is pregnant. Shame arises in her like a plague: understanding that her pregnancy will mark her and her family as social failures, she knows she cannot keep that child. This is the story, written forty years later, of a trauma Ernaux never overcame. In a France where abortion was illegal, she attempted, in vain, to self-administer the abortion with a knitting needle. Fearful and desperate, she finally located an abortionist, and ends up in a hospital emergency ward where she nearly dies. In Happening, Ernaux sifts through her memories and her journal entries dating from those days. Clearly, cleanly, she gleans the meanings of her experience. In 1963, Annie Ernaux, 23 and unattached, realizes she is pregnant. Shame arises in her like a plague: understanding that her pregnancy will mark her and her family as social failures, she knows she cannot keep that child. This is the story, written forty years later, of a trauma Ernaux never overcame. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2023A man starts driving without knowing where he is going. He alternates between turning right and left, and finally he gets stuck at the end of a forest road. Soon it gets dark and starts to snow, but instead of going back to find help, he ventures, foolishly, into the dark forest. Inevitably, the man gets lost, and as he grows cold and tired, he encounters a glowing being amid the obscurity. Strange, haunting and dreamlike, A Shining is the latest work of fiction by Jon Fosse, 'the Beckett of the twenty-first century' (Le Monde). Strange, haunting and dreamlike, A Shining is the latest work of fiction by Jon Fosse, 'the Beckett of the twenty-first century' (Le Monde). Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. 'The strangest thing about jealousy is that it can populate an entire city - the whole world - with a person you may never have met.' These words set the framework for The Possession, a striking portrait of a woman after a love affair has ended. Annie Ernaux pulls the reader through every step of jealousy, of a woman's need to know who has replaced her in a lost beloved's life. Ernaux's writing, characteristically gorgeous in its precision, depicts the all too familiar human tendency to seek control and certainty after rejection. Published in the UK for the first time, The Possession is a striking meditation on jealousy and a major work by the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Soft cover. Condizione: Fine. First Edition Thus. A FINE UNMARKED BOOK.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Feverish and forthright, Pond is an absorbing chronicle of the pitfalls and pleasures of a solitudinous life told by an unnamed woman living on the cusp of a coastal town. Broken bowls, belligerent cows, swanky aubergines, trembling moonrises and horrifying sunsets, the physical world depicted in these stories is unsettling yet intimately familiar and soon takes on a life of its own. Captivated by the stellar charms of seclusion but restless with desire, the womans relationship with her surroundings becomes boundless and increasingly bewildering. Claire-Louise Bennetts startlingly original first collection slips effortlessly between worlds and is by turns darkly funny and deeply moving. Feverish and forthright, Pond is an absorbing chronicle of the pitfalls and pleasures of a solitudinous life told by an unnamed woman living on the cusp of a coastal town. Claire-Louise Bennett's startlingly original debut collection slips effortlessly between worlds and is by turns darkly funny and deeply moving. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. What is pretentiousness? Why do we despise it? And more controversially: why is it vital to a thriving culture? In this brilliant, passionate essay, Dan Fox argues that it has always been an essential mechanism of the arts, from the most wildly successful pop music and fashion through to the most recondite avenues of literature and the visual arts. Pretentiousness: Why it Matters unpacks the uses and abuses of the term, tracing its connections to theatre, politics and class, advocating critical imagination over knee-jerk accusations of elitism or simple fear of the new and the different. This book is a timely defence of pretentiousness as a necessity for innovation and diversity in our culture. What is pretentiousness? Why are we afraid of it? And more controversially: why is it vital to a thriving culture? Drawing on the author's own experiences growing up and working at the more radical edges of the arts, this book is a timely defence of pretentiousness as a necessity for innovation and diversity in our culture. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Diego, the son, is disillusioned and bitter about the limited freedoms his country offers him. Mariana, the mother, is unwell and forced to relinquish her control over the home to her daughter, Maria, who has left school and is working as a chambermaid in one of the state-owned tourist hotels. The father, Armando, is a committed revolutionary who is sickened by the corruption he perceives all around him.In meticulously charting the disintegration of a family, The Fallen offers a poignant reflection on contemporary Cuba and the clash of the ardent idealism of the old guard with the jaded pragmatism of the young. A powerful, unsettling portrait of ordinary family life in Cuba, Carlos Manuel Alvarez's debut novel The Fallen is a masterful portrayal of a society in free fall. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Corbin College, not-quite-upstate New York, winter 1959-1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian-but not an historian of the Jews-is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host, to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies.'The Netanyahus is constructed with a brilliant comic grace that moves from the sly to the exuberant . The vision in this book is deeply original, making clear what a superb writer Joshua Cohen is.' - Colm Toibin'Absorbing, delightful, hilarious, breathtaking and the best and most relevant novel I've read in what feels like forever.' - New York Times Book Review Mixing fiction with non-fiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive, genre-bending comedy of blending, identity, and politics - 'An Account of A Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family' that finds Joshua Cohen at the height of his powers. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. …

Paperback. Condizione: Very Good. LivingThingsfollows four recent graduates Munir, G,Ernesto and Alex who travel from Madrid to the southof France to work the grape harvest. Except things dontgo as planned: they end up working on an industrialchicken farm and living on a campsite, where a generalsense of menace takes hold. What follows is a compellingand incisive examination of precarious employment,capitalism, immigration and the mass production oflivingthings, all interwoven with the protagonists thoughts onliterature and the nature of storytelling.A genre-bendingand dystopian eco-thriller,LivingThingsis a punk-likeblend of Roberto BolanosThe Savage DetectivesandSamanta SchweblinsFever Dream, heralding an excitingnew voice in international fiction. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Ernaux captures the feeling of contemporary living on the outskirts of Paris: poignantly lyrical, chaotic, and strangely alive. Exteriors is in many ways the most ecstatic of Ernaux's books - the first in which she appears largely free of the haunting personal relationships she has written about so powerfully elsewhere, and the first in which she is able to leave the past behind her.'Annie Ernaux is one of my favorite contemporary writers, original and true. Always after reading one of her books, I walk around in her world for months.' - Sheila Heti, author of Motherhood Taking the form of random journal entries over the course of seven years, Exteriors concentrates on the ephemeral encounters that take place just on the periphery of a person's lived environment. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Annie Ernaux's father died exactly two months after she passed her exams for a teaching certificate. Barely educated and valued since childhood strictly for his labour, Ernaux's father had grown into a hard, practical man who showed his family little affection. Narrating his slow ascent towards material comfort, Ernaux's cold observation in A Man's Place reveals the shame that haunted her father throughout his life. She scrutinizes the importance he attributed to manners and language that came so unnaturally to him as he struggled to provide for his family with a grocery store and cafe in rural France. Over the course of the book, Ernaux grows up to become the uncompromising observer now familiar to the world, while her father matures into old age with a staid appreciation for life as it is and for a daughter he cautiously, even reluctantly admires.'Ernaux has inherited de Beauvoir's role of chronicler to a generation.' - Margaret Drabble Barely educated and valued since childhood strictly for his labour, Ernauxs father had grown into a hard, practical man who showed his family little affection. Narrating his slow ascent towards material comfort, Ernauxs cold observation in A Mans Place reveals the shame that haunted her father throughout his life. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. …

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. On 7 April 1986, Annie Ernaux's mother, after years of suffering from Alzheimer's disease, died in a retirement home in the suburbs of Paris. Shocked by this loss which, despite her mother's condition, she had refused to fathom, Ernaux embarks on a daunting journey back through time in an effort to recover the different facets of a woman whose openness to the world and appetite for reading created the conditions for the author's own social ascent.Mirroring A Man's Place, in which she narrates her father's slow rise to material comfort, A Woman's Story explores the ambiguous and unshakeable bond between mother and daughter, its fluctuation over the course of their lives, the alienating worlds that separate them and the inescapable truth that we must lose the ones we love. In this quietly powerful tribute to the last thread connecting her to the world out of which she was born, Ernaux attempts to do her mother the greatest justice she can: to portray her as the individual she was. A deeply affecting tribute to her mothers life and death by Annie Ernaux, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. A powerful meditation on ageing and familial love, I Remain in Darkness recounts Annie Ernaux's attempts to help her mother recover from Alzheimer's disease, and then, when that proves futile, to bear witness to the older woman's gradual decline and her own experience as a daughter losing a beloved parent. Haunting and devastatingly poignant, I Remain in Darkness showcases Ernaux's unique talent for evoking life's darkest and most bewildering episodes. 'Acute and immediate, I Remain in Darkness is an unforgettable exploration of love, memory and the journey to loss.' -Eimear McBride, author of A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. 'My father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in the early afternoon.' Thus begins Shame, the probing story of the twelve-year-old girl who will become Annie Ernaux, and the traumatic memory that will echo and resonate throughout her life.With the emotionally rich voice of great fiction and the analytical eye of a scientist, Annie Ernaux provides a powerful reflection on experience and the force of violent memory to endure through time, to deter-mine the course of a life. My father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in the early afternoon. Thus begins Shame, the probing story of the twelve-year-old girl who will become Annie Ernaux, and the traumatic memory that will echo and resonate throughout her life. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. In her latest work, Annie Ernaux recounts a relationship with a student thirty years her junior - an experience that transforms her, briefly, back into the 'scandalous girl' of her youth. When she is with him, she replays scenes she has already lived through, feeling both ageless and closer to death. Laid like a palimpsest on the present, the past's immediacy pushes her to take a decisive step in her writing - producing, in turn, the need to expunge her lover. At once stark and tender, The Young Man is a taut encapsulation of Ernaux's relationship to time, memory and writing. In her latest work, Annie Ernaux recounts a relationship with a student thirty years her junior - an experience that transforms her, briefly, back into the 'scandalous girl' of her youth. At once stark and tender, The Young Man is a taut encapsulation of Ernaux's relationship to time, memory and writing. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. …

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Considered by many to be the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature laureates defining work, The Years is a narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present, cultural habits, language, photos, books, songs, radio, television, advertising and news headlines. Annie Ernaux invents a form that is subjective and impersonal, private and collective, and a new genre the collective autobiography in order to capture the passing of time. At the confluence of autofiction and sociology, The Years is a Remembrance of Things Past for our age of media domination and consumerism (New York Times), a monumental account of twentieth-century French history as refracted through the life of one woman. At the confluence of autofiction and sociology, The Years is a Remembrance of Things Past for our age of media domination and consumerism (New York Times), a monumental account of twentieth-century French history as refracted through the life of one woman. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. …

Paperback. Condizione: Very Good. A man starts driving without knowing where he is going. He alternates between turning right and left, and finally he gets stuck at the end of a forest road. Soon it gets dark and starts to snow, but instead of going back to find help, he ventures, foolishly, into the dark forest. Inevitably, the man gets lost, and as he grows cold and tired, he encounters a glowing being amid the obscurity. Strange, haunting and dreamlike, A Shining is a luminous tale about the boundary between life and death by Jon Fosse, the Beckett of the twenty-first century (Le Monde). The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. With Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Man Booker International Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk returns with a subversive, entertaining noir novel. In a remote Polish village, Janina Duszejko, an eccentric woman in her sixties, recounts the events surrounding the disappearance of her two dogs. She is reclusive, preferring the company of animals to people; shes unconventional, believing in the stars; and she is fond of the poetry of William Blake, from whose work the title of the book is taken. When members of a local hunting club are found murdered, Duszejko becomes involved in the investigation. By no means a conventional crime story, this existential thriller by one of Europes major humanist writers (Guardian) offers thought-provoking ideas on our perceptions of madness, injustice against marginalized people, animal rights, the hypocrisy of traditional religion, belief in predestination and caused a genuine political uproar in Tokarczuks native Poland. With Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, International Booker Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk returns with a subversive, entertaining noir novel. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. From one of the most lauded artists of his generation comes a purging soliloquy: a profound nowt delivered in some spent afterwards. Scorched by senility and nostalgia, and wracked by all kinds of hunger, Ed Atkins' Old Food lurches from allegory to listicle, from lyric to menu, fetching up a plummeting, idiomatic and crabbed tableau from the cannibalised remains of each form in turn. Written in conjunction with Atkins' exhibition of the same name, Old Food is a hard Brexit, wadded with historicity, melancholy and a bravura kind of stupidity. From one of the most lauded artists of his generation comes a purging soliloquy: a profound nowt delivered in some spent afterwards. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. …

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. A French philosopher dies during a savage summer heat wave. Boxes carrying his unpublished miscellany mysteriously appear in Simon Critchley's office. Rooting through piles of papers, Critchley discovers a brilliant text on the ancient art of memory and a cache of astrological charts predicting the deaths of various philosophers. Among them is a chart for Critchley himself, laying out in great detail the course of his life and eventual demise. Becoming obsessed with the details of his fate, Critchley receives the missing, final box, which contains a maquette of Giulio Camillo's sixteenth-century Venetian memory theatre, a space supposed to contain the sum of all knowledge. That's when the hallucinations begin. 'Memory Theatre is a brilliant one-of-a-kind mind game occupying a strange frontier between philosophy, memoir and fiction. Simon Critchley beguiles as he illuminates.' - David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas This is part novel, part prose poem illuminated by a series of photographs of New York buildings gradually making and unmaking themselves. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Flights, a novel about travel in the twenty-first century and human anatomy, is Olga Tokarczuks most ambitious to date. It interweaves travel narratives and reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. From the seventeenth century, we have the story of the Dutch anatomist Philip Verheyen, who dissected and drew pictures of his own amputated leg. From the eighteenth century, we have the story of a North African-born slave turned Austrian courtier stuffed and put on display after his death. In the nineteenth century, we follow Chopins heart as it makes the covert journey from Paris to Warsaw. In the present we have the trials of a wife accompanying her much older husband as he teaches a course on a cruise ship in the Greek islands, and the harrowing story of a young husband whose wife and child mysteriously vanish on a holiday on a Croatian island. With her signature grace and insight, Olga Tokarczuk guides the reader beyond the surface layer of modernity and towards the core of the very nature of humankind. From the incomparably original Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, Flights interweaves reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Set during a single twelve-hour night shift in a factory, plastic is a book-length poem exploring the life of the industrial worker turned poet.Bringing together memoir, ekphrasis and satire, Bplastic is based on Matthew Rice's experience working in a plastic moulding factory for ten years. Illustrating alienated twenty-first-century Irish labour in poetic form, plastic engages with the inflictions and implications of a 'post-industrial', 'post-Troubles' society, all while weaving in depictions of factory work from literature, film and the visual arts.Time-stamped to highlight the claustrophobia of the worker's experience, this is a poem about feeling a calling while being submerged in the world of menial labour - making plastic airplane parts by night, making poetry by day, uniting what Jacques Ranciere calls the 'labourers in love with the intellectual nights' and those 'intellectuals in love with the toilsome and glorious days of the labouring people.' plastic's evocation and lucidity moves with grace through working class realities and hopeful imaginings. Set during a single twelve-hour night shift in an injection molding factory, plastic is a poem exploring the life of the industrial worker turned poet. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Pristina, Kosovo, 1999. Barry Ashton, recently divorced, has been deployed as a civil engineer attached to the Royal Engineers corps in the British Army. In an extraordinary feat of ventriloquism, Adam Mars-Jones constructs a literary story with a thoroughly unliterary narrator, and a narrative that is anything but comic through the medium of a character who, essentially, is. Exploring masculinity, class and identity, BatlavaLake is a brilliant story of men and war by one of Britain's most accomplished writers.'No one inhabits character as intensely and subtly as Mars-Jones. Batlava Lake is therefore completely convincing as an everyman narrative - we know people exactly like Barry Ashton, and may even be exactly like him - but there's a larger truth here too, about clashes of cultures and history, that make this an important and highly recommended book.'- Lee Child Exploring masculinity, class and identity, Batlava Lake is a brilliant story of men and war by one of Britain's most accomplished writers. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. 'This book is not a suicide note. Ten days after Edouard Leve handed in the manuscript of Suicide to his publisher in 2007, he hanged himself in his apartment. He was 42. Two years after Jean Amery's On Suicide was published in 1976, the author took an overdose of sleeping pills. He was 65. In 1960, some eighteen years after Albert Camus had raised and - so he thought - resolved the question of suicide in The Myth of Sisyphus, he was killed in a car accident. He is alleged to have said that dying in a car crash is the most absurd of all deaths. The absurdity of his death is compounded by the fact he had an unused train ticket in his pocket. He was 46.Let me say at the outset, at the risk of disappointing the reader, that I have no plans to kill myself. just yet. Nor do I wish to join the chorus of those who proclaim loudly against suicide and claim that the act of taking one's own life is irresponsible and selfish, even shameful and cowardly, that people must stay alive whatever the cost. Suicide, in my view, is neither a legal nor moral offence, and should not be seen as such. My intention here is to simply try to understand the phenomenon, the act itself, what precedes it and what follows. I'd like to consider suicide from the point of view of those who have made the leap, or have come close to it - we might even find that the capacity to take that leap is what picks us out as humans. I want to look at suicide closely, carefully, and perhaps a little coldly, without immediately leaping to judgements or asserting moral principles like the right to life or death. We have to look suicide in the face, long and hard, and see what features, what profile, what inherited character traits and wrinkles emerge. Perhaps what we see when we look closely is our own distorted reflection staring back at us.' 'We have to look suicide in the face, long and hard, and see what features, what profile, what inherited character traits and wrinkles emerge.' Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…