I grew up in white South Africa, a racist, philistine, authoritarian, and puritanical society. The first four books I have chosen appeared in the 1950s, and I read them in my teens. Catch-22 was published in the ‘60s, but all five heroes–or anti-heroes–of these novels were of the same generation, about ten years my senior, so they were perfectly placed to be role models. They were rebels and mavericks, and except for Yossarian, they were all would-be writers. I recognised a kinship with them and took them as my guides into adulthood. And so I left for Paris and became a writer and an anthropologist. No regrets.
I wrote...
The Museum of Other People: From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions
Launched in the 1840s to showcase “other” ways of life, museums of anthropology and prehistory are in crisis. Campaigners demand the return of treasures seized in imperial campaigns or acquired in colonial settings. There are calls to “decolonise” scholarship and to value “indigenous knowledge.” Who has the right to select items for exhibition and to explain the history and significance of an artefact?
Should museums of other people be made over as shrines of identity or repurposed as art galleries? Or might we imagine a cosmopolitan museum that is not a propaganda tool, that values scholarship, transcends local, ethnic, or national identities, tracks exchanges across political frontiers, brings out connections, makes comparisons, and does not lapse into empty generalities about the human condition?
This is a compulsive first-person account of the plight of Holden Caulfield, an awkward adolescent, just expelled from his private boarding school, who is shyly trying to find sex and love while pursuing a personal crusade against adult hypocrisy. (His favourite put-down is “phony”).
I read it first as a teenager in South Africa and felt an immediate kinship with Holden, a Tom Sawyer for our times, who was standing up for himself against the idiocies of the grown-ups.
Kicked out of his lodging, losing his way in life and work, Jake Donaghue, a struggling young writer, appeals to old friends for practical and moral support. A brilliant philosopher tells him: "All theorizing is flight. We must be ruled by the situation itself.” (This was my introduction to Existentialism!) On a visit to his beloved Paris, Jake begins to find his way, starts a new book, and finds a new lover.
A grown-up Holden Caulfield, Jake set me an example of someone who breaks free of habit and constraint and finds his own way. So I went to Paris and tried to do it my way.
Iris Murdoch's debut-a comic novel about work and love, wealth and fame
Jake Donaghue, garrulous artist, meets Hugo Bellfounder, silent philosopher.
Jake, hack writer and sponger, now penniless flat-hunter, seeks out an old girlfriend, Anna Quentin, and her glamorous actress sister, Sadie. He resumes acquaintance with the formidable Hugo, whose 'philosophy' he once presumptuously dared to interpret. These meetings involve Jake and his eccentric servant-companion, Finn, in a series of adventures that include the kidnapping of a film-star dog and a political riot on a film set of ancient Rome. Jake, fascinated, longs to learn Hugo's secret. Perhaps Hugo's secret…
Sebastian Dangerfield, a scruffy Yank studying at Trinity College Dublin under the GI Bill, loses his wife, finds a lover, and talks to himself–“In my heart where no one else can hear me.”
The book was banned for decades after publication in the 1950s, not so much for indecency (though there is that) as for sheer insolence. The Irish writer Sean O’Reilly asks: “Is there, even after all this time, something risky, illicit perhaps, about Sebastian Dangerfield whispering in your ear while your heart is bursting with laughter?"
Another 1950s anti-hero in the same gang as Holden Caulfield and Jake Donaghue. Another bad example for my guidance.
*Accompanied by unseen photographs from the Donleavy archive *Includes a poignant memoir of Gainor Crist, the man who inspired Sebastian Dangerfield, by his daughter, Mariana *The Lilliput Press will publish Donleavy's 27th book, the novel 'A Letter Marked Personal' in the spring of 2019.
Showcasing for the first time 220 of renowned author J.P. Donleavy's most intimate letters, this scrupulously edited collection throws an extraordinary light on the composition, publication and afterlife of The Ginger Man --- the genesis of a masterpiece that went on to sell 60 million copies around the world. Spanning the late 1940s to the early…
This classic Beat Generation novel narrates a road trip by two young Americans, Sal Paradise (obviously Kerouac himself) and his friend Dean Moriarty. They ride from coast to coast without a plan, looking for adventure, calling on like-minded friends, and hoping to find some meaning in their lives.
Kerouac and his pals had a lot in common with the other heroes—and anti-heroes—of my youth, and like them, he was a joyful, fearless writer.
The legendary novel of freedom and the search for authenticity that defined a generation, now in a striking new Pengiun Classics Deluxe Edition
Inspired by Jack Kerouac's adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naivete and wild ambition and imbued with Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz, On the Road is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hope, a book that changed American literature and changed…
This book is set during World War II. Captain John Yossarian, bombardier, has a hard time maintaining his sanity, let alone keeping alive. His crazed commander demands that the crew fly ever more dangerous missions. Yossarian realises a terrible truth: “The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.” When men request leave because they are going crazy, the camp doctor explains the catch-22. "Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."
Yossarian’s predicament was more extreme, his adults more dangerous, but like my other big brothers, he insisted on doing things his way.
Explosive, subversive, wild and funny, 50 years on the novel's strength is undiminished. Reading Joseph Heller's classic satire is nothing less than a rite of passage.
Set in the closing months of World War II, this is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. His real problem is not the enemy - it is his own army which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. If Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the…
Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of citations and interviews with more than 250 key protagonists, experts, and witnesses.
So far, the book is the main -- and only -- antidote to a slew of early partisan “Benghazi” polemics, and the first to put the attack in its longer term historical, political, and social context. If you…
On September 11, 2012, Al Qaeda proxies attacked and set fire to the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, killing a US Ambassador and three other Americans. The attack launched one of the longest and most consequential 'scandals' in US history, only to disappear from public view once its political value was spent.
Written in a highly engaging narrative style by one of a few Western experts on Libya, and decidely non-partisan, Benghazi!: A New History is the first to provide the full context for an event that divided, incited, and baffled most of America for more than three years, while silently reshaping…
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