Canons – serie

Bird by Bird is the bible of writing guides - a wry, honest, down-to-earth book that has never stopped selling since it was first published in the United States in the 1990s. Bestselling novelist and memoirist Anne Lamott distils what she's learned over years of trial and error. Beautifully written, wise and immensely helpful, this is the book for all serious writers and writers-to-be.

'Impossible to put down' Observer'One of the great books of the century' Times Literary SupplementRebecca West's epic masterpiece not only provides deep insight into the former country of Yugoslavia; it is a portrait of Europe on the brink of war. A heady cocktail of personal travelogue and historical insight, this product of an implacably inquisitive intelligence remains essential for anyone attempting to understand the history of the Balkan states, and the wider ongoing implications for a fractured Europe.

At a time when political, environmental and social gloom can seem overpowering, this remarkable book offers a lucid, affirmative and well-argued case for hope. This exquisite work traces a history of activism and social change over the past five decades - from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the worldwide marches against the war in Iraq. Hope in the Dark is a paean to optimism in the uncertainty of the twenty-first century. Tracing the footsteps of the last century's thinkers - including Woolf, Gandhi, Borges, Benjamin and Havel - Solnit conjures a timeless vision of cause and effect that will light our way through the dark, and lead us to profound and effective political engagement.

In 1966 John Berger spent three months in the Forest of Dean shadowing an English country GP, John Sassall. Sassall is a fortunate man - his work occupies and fulfils him, he lives amongst the patients he treats, the line between his life and his work is happily blurred.In A Fortunate Man, Berger's text and the photography of Jean Mohr reveal with extraordinary intensity the life of a remarkable man. It is a portrait of one selfless individual and the rural community for which he became the hub. Drawing on psychology, biography and medicine A Fortunate Man is a portrait of sacrifice. It is also a profound exploration of what it means to be a doctor, to serve a community and to heal.With a new introduction by writer and GP, Gavin Francis.

INTRODUCTION BY RODDY DOYLE'He brought everyone down to earth, even the angels' LEONARD COHENCharles Bukowski is one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century. The autobiographical Ham on Rye is widely considered his finest novel. A classic of American literature, it offers powerful insight into his youth through the prism of his alter-ego Henry Chinaski, who grew up to be the legendary Hank Chinaski of Post Office and Factotum.

The Sea Around Us is one of the most influential books ever written about the natural world. In it Rachel Carson tells the history of our oceans, combining scientific insight and poetic prose as only she can, to take us from the creation of the oceans, through their role in shaping life on Earth, to what the future holds. It was prophetic at the time it was written, alerting the world to a crisis in the climate, and it speaks to the fragility and centrality of the oceans and the life that abounds within them.

How do you prepare yourself, all alone, to enter an extraordinary state on an ordinary morning?In The Writing Life, Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Dillard offers up her own trials in the pursuit of inspiration: the absurdity, the fierce determination and the sacrifices (warm feet; gainful employment; peace of mind). Her perennial guide, which wrestles with the hubris and insanity of the creative process, has been an inspiration and a comfort to writers for nearly forty years.

Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black is the only story collection from the legendary writer, actress, ex-biker and columnist Cookie Mueller, published in the UK for the first time.Mueller chronicles her high-risk, high-reward life in glorious technicolour, from becoming a part of John Waters' legendary acting troupe to becoming a mother, from describing the hedonism of 1980s New York to critiquing the government's dire response to the AIDS epidemic. Cookie's voice is fresh, wise, freewheeling and unafraid of darkness. Like a lysergic Nora Ephron, she is the candid flipside to the idealistic hippie dream. Whether good, bad or ugly, her stories are fiercely entertaining and reliably honest.Featuring a new introduction by Olivia Laing, this edition collects Mueller's stories, columns and writings, and presents a testament to a life lived courageously and well.

Now a brand new Sky Original show starring Matt SmithThe world is a hard place to be good in... Struggling to keep a grip on reality after his wife's death, Bunny Munro does the only thing he can think of: with his young son in tow, he hits the road. An epic chronicle of one man's judgement, The Death of Bunny Munro is also an achingly tender portrait of the relationship between father and son.

The One State is the perfect society, ruled over by the enlightened Benefactor. It is a city made almost entirely of glass, where surveillance is universal and life runs according to algorithmic rules to ensure perfect happiness. And D-503, the Builder, is the ideal citizen, at least until he meets I-330, who opens his eyes to new ideas of love, sex and freedom.A foundational work of dystopian fiction, inspiration for both Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Huxley's Brave New World, WE is a book of radical imaginings - of control and rebellion, surveillance and power, machine intelligence and human inventiveness, sexuality and desire. In this brilliant new translation, it is both a warning and a hope for a better world.

First published in 1956 when he was twenty-two years old, Let Us Compare Mythologies is Leonard Cohen's first collection of poetry. It is an accomplished and passionate collection which demonstrates Cohen's remarkably assured voice, even as a young man.An unprecedented debut published to immediate acclaim, new generations of readers will now rediscover not only the early work of one of our most beloved writers, but poetry that resonates loudly with relevance today.

Penelope. Immortalised in legend and myth as the devoted wife of the glorious Odysseus, silently weaving and unpicking and weaving again as she waits for her husband's return.Now Penelope wanders the underworld, spinning a different kind of thread: her own side of the story - a tale of lust, greed and murder.The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and Jeanette Winterson.

When Gunnar Huttunen turns up in a small village to restore its run-down mill, its inhabitants are wary. Gunnar is big. He's a bit odd. And, strangest of all, he howls wildly at night. If Gunnar is different, then he must be mad, the villagers decide. Hounded from his home, he must find a way to survive the wilds of nature and the greater savagery of civilization. The Howling Miller is a dark fairytale of community, conformity and our place in the world.

Idealistic young officer Giovanni Drogo is full of determination to serve his country well. But when he arrives at a bleak border station in the Tartar desert, where he is to take a short assignment at Fort Bastiani, he finds the castle manned by veteran soldiers who have grown old without seeing a trace of the enemy. As his length of service stretches from months into years, he continues to wait patiently for the enemy to advance across the desert, for one great and glorious battle . . . Written in 1938 as the world waited for war, and internationally acclaimed since its publication, The Tartar Steppe is a provocative and frightening tale of hope, longing and the terrible sorcery of dreams and desires.

Now is the time for the new, the beautiful and the humane.In Together, award-winning political thinker, author and poet Ece Temelkuran provides an inspiring manifesto for change by revealing fresh possibilities for the better world we might want to live in and gives us a new vocabulary for the political action that the twenty-first century demands.Above all, this book will challenge you to have faith in the other human beings we share this planet with, to turn away from an uncaring world and instead build a new one with compassion.

The poems in Book of Mercy brim with praise, despair, anger, doubt and trust. Speaking from the heart of the modern world, yet in tones that resonate with an older devotional tradition, these verses give voice to our deepest, most powerful intuitions.Internationally celebrated for his writing and his music, Leonard Cohen is revered as one of the greatest writers, performers, and most consistently daring artists of the last hundred years.

'The finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain' GuardianIntroduction by Robert Macfarlane. Afterword by Jeanette WintersonIn this masterpiece of nature writing, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape. Shepherd spent a lifetime in search of the 'essential nature' of the Cairngorms; her quest led her to write this classic meditation on the magnificence of mountains, and on our imaginative relationship with the wild world around us. Composed during the Second World War, the manuscript of The Living Mountain lay untouched for more than thirty years before it was finally published.

First things first, stay calm.Eric Sanderson wakes up in a place he doesn't recognise, unable to remember who he is. All he has left are journal entries recalling Clio, a perfect love now gone. As he begins to piece his memories back together, Eric finds that he is being hunted by a creature that moves in language, that swims through the currents of human interaction.With the help of his cynical cat Ian, Eric must search for the Ludovician, the force that is threatening his life, and Dr Trey Fidorus, the only man who knows the truth.

How to Lose a Country is a warning to the world that populism and nationalism don't march fully-formed into government; they creep.Award-winning author and journalist Ece Temelkuran identifies the early warning signs of this phenomenon, sprouting up across the world from Eastern Europe to South America, in order to arm the reader with the tools to recognise it and take action.Weaving memoir, history and clear-sighted argument, Temelkuran proposes alternative answers to the pressing - and too often paralysing - political questions of our time. How to Lose a Country is an exploration of the insidious ideas at the core of these movements and an urgent, eloquent defence of democracy. This 2024 edition includes a new foreword by the author.

In the wake of the 2011 tsunami, Ruth discovers a Hello Kitty lunchbox washed up on the shore of her beach home in British Columbia. Within it lies a diary that expresses the hopes, heartbreak and dreams of a young girl desperate for someone to understand her. Each turn of the page pulls Ruth deeper into the mystery of Nao's life, and forever changes her in a way neither could foresee.Weaving across continents and decades, A Tale for the Time Being is an extraordinary novel about our shared humanity and the search for home.

In this essential and impassioned text, LeRoi Jones traces the intertwined development of blues and jazz music with the history of its creators in 'White America'. As important and relevant as at its first publication in 1963, it shows how music and its people are inseparable - expressing and reflecting the other, surviving and adapting through oppression.

Andreas Egger knows every path and peak of his mountain valley, the source of his sustenance, his livelihood - his home.Set in the mid-twentieth century and told with beauty and tenderness, Robert Seethaler's A Whole Life is a story of man's relationship with an ancient landscape, of the value of solitude, of the arrival of the modern world, and above all, of the moments, great and small, that make us who we are.

In a seamless mosaic of dreams and games, a young boy reflects on events as his hometown in Albania falls to a series of invaders. Amid floods and bombings, his own innocence and wonder are lost forever in the madness and brutality of the Second World War.A disturbing mix of tragedy and comedy, politics and sexuality, Chronicle in Stone is a fascinating masterpiece about what it means to grow up in a turbulent world.

One boy, one boat, one tiger . . .After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild, blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orang-utan - and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger. The scene is set for one of the most extraordinary and best-loved works of fiction in recent years.

In exhilarating and lucid prose, Grossman gives us a provocative new take on the story of Samson: his battle with the lion, the three hundred burning foxes, the women he bedded, the one he loved and who betrayed him and the destruction of the temple. It reveals the journey of a lonely and tortured soul, whose search for a true home echoes our own private struggles.The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and Jeanette Winterson.

A Guardian literary highlight A Huffington Post 'One to Watch' 'Astounding' LENA DUNHAM, creator of Girls and author of Not That Kind of Girl'The First Bad Man brings together all of July's talents - it's a book that must be read, a book that must be purchased - in duplicate - one for you, one for a friend. Don't think you can loan this book - you'll never get it back' A. M. HOMES, author of This Book Will Save Your Life and May We Be ForgivenThe first novel by the filmmaker, artist and bestselling author Miranda July confirms her as a spectacularly original, iconic, and important voice today, and a writer for all time. The First Bad Man is dazzling and unforgettable.

Introduced by David MitchellIn a coastal village in medieval Japan, a young boy called Isaku battles to keep his family alive against the odds. With his father gone, Isaku is forced to grow up well before his time. He must learn how to catch fish, how to distil salt, and about all the mysteries of the vast churning sea, not least the legend of O-fune-sama, of ships wrecked offshore providing the village with unexpected bounty.When a ship founders on the rocks, Isaku and the villagers rejoice. Long have they prayed for the sea's gifts. But the cargo is not at all the blessing they had hoped for. At first mystifying, then terrifying, something dark is coming ashore and it's about to change their lives forever.

'The finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain' GuardianIntroduction by Robert Macfarlane. Afterword by Jeanette WintersonIn this masterpiece of nature writing, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape. Shepherd spent a lifetime in search of the 'essential nature' of the Cairngorms; her quest led her to write this classic meditation on the magnificence of mountains, and on our imaginative relationship with the wild world around us. Composed during the Second World War, the manuscript of The Living Mountain lay untouched for more than thirty years before it was finally published.

Under the Sea-Wind marks the beginnings of one of the most significant careers in nature writing. In it Rachel Carson celebrates the mystery and beauty of birds and sea creatures in their natural habitat, conjuring the atmosphere of the shore and the open sea and the delicately balanced, fragile struggle for life along the shoreline.