Writing on Life, Art and the World

The first collection of Booker Prize-winning writer Anne Enright's non-fiction writing about culture, literature and her own life

'Anne Enright might just be Ireland’s greatest living writer' THE TIMES

'A joy to read' MAGGIE O'FARRELL

For thirty years Anne Enright has been paying attention: casting her lucid and distinctive gaze across the world, literature and her own life, and gifting us with her precise insights.

These essays, collated from across Enright's career, take us from Dublin to Galway, Canada to Honduras. They delve into Enright’s own family history, and explore the free voices and controlled bodies of women in society and fiction. She offers new perspectives on writers including Alice Munro, Toni Morrison, James Joyce, Helen Garner and Angela Carter.

In Enright’s fiction, speech can transform, rupture, enliven and liberate. In these essays, she speaks to us directly. Electrifying, probing and exuberant, this is a defining collection from one of our most distinguished literary voices.

'One of the best essayists alive' MEGAN NOLAN, OBSERVER

'Confirms the intelligence, compassion and humour of the mind behind the novels' INDEPENDENT

'A glorious antidote to the mad, sad world' EIMEAR MCBRIDE

'So alert, so attuned, so alive' LUCY CALDWELL