Showing titles in Art & Literature

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926) war nicht nur Lyriker, wenngleich seine Gedichte heute einen Großteil seines Ruhmes ausmachen. Er schrieb auch Dramen und einen Roman: Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge. Seine frühe Lyrik, seine kleinen Dramen und seine Jugend-Prosaskizzen dokumentieren noch des Dichters Unentschiedenheit zwischen Naturalismus, Jugendstil und Neuromantik.

Another Sort of Freedom is a funny, moving and honest memoir of a man's struggle to break free from expectations. Gurcharan Das was born in Lyallpur, Punjab, during World War II, when Hitler, Churchill and Hirohito were bashing everyone around. His mother noted in her diary, 'This is a restless...

In arguably his most personal and lasting book, America's most daringly original and controversial critic gives us brief, luminous readings of more than eighty texts by canonical authors-- texts he has had by heart since childhood. Gone are the polemics. Here, instead, in a memoir of sorts--an...

May Sarton's parrot chatters away as Sarton looks out the window at the rain and contemplates returning to her "real" life - not friends, not even love, but writing. In her bravest and most revealing memoir, Sarton casts her keenly observant eye on both the interior and exterior worlds. She shares insights about everyday life in the quiet New Hampshire village of Nelson, the desire for friends, and need for solitude - both an exhilarating and terrifying state.

During the 1930s at Oxford, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams - remarkable friends, writers, and scholars - met regularly to discuss philosophy and literature and to read aloud from their own works in progress. Calling themselves the Inklings, their circle grew. It was in this company that such classics as The Lord of the Rings, The Screwtape Letters, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe first found an audience.

Here is one of the great autobiographies of the English language - exuberant, wonderfully contemporary in spirit, by a man twice as large as life who—he said so himself—had no trouble remembering everything that had ever happened to him and a lot of things besides.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) never signed a painting, and none of his supposed self-portraits can be securely ascribed to his hand. He revealed next to nothing about his life in his extensive writings, yet countless pages have been written about him that assign him an identity: genius, entrepreneur, celebrity artist, outsider. Addressing the ethical stakes involved in studying past lives, Stephen J. Campbell shows how this invented Leonardo has invited speculation from figures ranging from art dealers and curators to scholars, scientists, and biographers.

In this deeply etched and haunting memoir, Vivian Gornick tells the story of her lifelong battle with her mother for independence. Gornick's groundbreaking book confronts what Edna O'Brien has called "the principal crux of female despair": the unacknowledged Oedipal nature of the mother-daughter bond. Born and raised in the Bronx, the daughter of "urban peasants," Gornick grows up in a household dominated by her intelligent but uneducated mother's romantic depression over the early death of her husband. 

Novelists, poets and playwrights live double lives, sharing the real world with everyone else while spending a good deal of time in a universe of their own making. When they fall out with each other, they are able to kindle feuds and antagonisms as passionate and public as workers in any trade. Richard Bradford’s highly entertaining audiobook looks at some of the closest and most complex relationships in literary history, examining their dramatic effects on literature itself.

Joining us at Audible Studios is British advertising executive Rory Sutherland, whose TED talks have been viewed nearly seven million times. He has recently released his book Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense. In many areas of our lives, reason plays an infinitesimal part. We are driven by unconscious desires. We are drawn to the beautiful, the extravagant and the absurd, such as tiny bottles of fragrance. If you want to influence people's choices, you have to bypass reason.

Joining us in the Audible Studios to discuss her latest book, The Four Tendencies, is New York Times best-selling author and happiness expert Gretchen Rubin. Author of international best sellers The Happiness Project and Happier at Home, Gretchen Rubin has made waves with her insights into habits, happiness and human nature. With more than 600,000 people having taken her online quiz and a hugely successful podcast and blog, Gretchen delves further into personality traits with her latest title, The Four Tendencies.

I would like to be remembered as someone who made people smile.' One of the great icons of our time, Khushwant Singh, 95, is a man of contradictions. An agnostic who's well-versed in the holy scriptures; a vocal champion of free speech who supported the Emergency; a 'dirty old man' who...

A.J.A. Symons discovered Frederick Rolfe’s Hadrian the Seventh in 1925 and became consumed with fascination for its eccentric author, aka ‘Baron Corvo’. His ‘quest’ takes the form of an irresistible detective story, the twists and turns of his investigation into Rolfe’s unfortunate life resulting in a groundbreaking form of biography that reveals much about both men.

In a remarkable feat of biography, Matthew Hollis reconstructs the intellectual creation of the poem and brings the material reality of its charged times vividly to life. Presenting a mosaic of historical fragments, diaries, dynamic literary criticism and illuminating new research, he reveals the cultural and personal trauma that forged The Waste Land through the lives of its protagonists.

Joining us in the studio to talk about his latest book, Rebel Ideas, is British table tennis Olympian, author, journalist and broadcaster Matthew Syed. Known for being the ping-pong guy from popular sports podcast Flintoff, Savage and the Ping Pong Guy, Matthew Syed started his career as a table tennis player, competing in two Olympic games, and was ranked as a top player in England for 10 years. Since then, Matthew moved on to a career in journalism, writing a column in The Times and broadcasting on the BBC and Eurosport.

Fantasy writer and film editor Joe Abercrombie joins Elise Italiaander in the Audible Studios to talk about the writing of his 'edgy yet humorous' fantasy novels and the exciting film projects that he's been involved in.

Ant and Dec met on CBBC's Byker Grove and an instant friendship was formed, on and off screen. They moved from acting to music, releasing three albums as PJ & Duncan, including their still popular hit, 'Let's Get Ready to Rhumble'. From there, presenting children's TV with shows such as SMTV and Gimme 5 was the next step in their journey towards international renown. Next came primetime slots, with the duo presenting shows such as Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, Britain's Got Talent and I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!

Joining us at Audible Studios is Alex Bertie, YouTube vlogger of his transgender journey and author of Trans Mission: My Quest to a Beard. When Alex was born, doctors took one look and put an 'F' for female on the birth certificate, based on genitals. When Alex was 15 he realised he was a transgender man, through many years of struggling with identity. After coming out to family and friends, Alex battled the health-care system in order to take male hormones, have surgery, change his name and grow a beard.

Joining us in the Audible Studios to talk about his latest novel, Salvation, is best-selling science-fiction author Peter F. Hamilton. Coined the king of space opera, Peter F. Hamilton has created some of science fiction’s most vast and extensive universes, making him one of Britain’s biggest selling sci-fi authors. Known for The Night’s Dawn trilogy and the Commonwealth Saga in particular, Hamilton embarks on a new universe, publishing Salvation, the first book in a brand-new trilogy, in 2018.

Pamuk draws on Friedrich Schiller's famous distinction between "naive" poets-who write spontaneously, serenely, unselfconsciously-and "sentimental" poets: those who are reflective, emotional, questioning, and alive to the artifice of the written word. Harking back to the beloved novels of his youth and ranging through the work of such writers as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Stendhal, Flaubert, Proust, Mann, and Naipaul, he explores the oscillation between the naive and the reflective, and the search for an equilibrium, that lie at the center of the novelist's craft.