David Sedaris – författare

'Very little makes me laugh. I would say the one exception is anything by David Sedaris' GRAHAM NORTON'Sedaris is the God of the comic essay... Sedaris' only rule: be funny or perish' LENA DUNHAMIn The Land and Its People, David Sedaris investigates what it means to be a traveller, a brother, a lifelong friend. Trying on the role of carer after his boyfriend Hugh's hip-replacement surgery, he both succeeds and fails. He covers ground with his friend Dawn and challenges her to eat a truck tire. An ambivalent Duolingo bot becomes his unlikely confidante as he attempts to describe his family in a foreign language. Ever adding to his list of 'Countries I Have Been To,' he rides a horse named Tequila in Guatemala, buys a bespoke priest's cassock in Vatican City, and goes on safari in Kenya without taking a single photo. Time takes its toll: Scrolling through his address book, he counts those he couldn't bear to outline and realizes how many are already gone. He is bitten by a dog and insulted by a wee train passenger. A woman on the street late at night either sexually harasses him or doesn't. It's easy to agree with the lady waving a sign that reads, 'Enough is Enough.' And yet, life holds much to delight in: the massive testicles of a ram, a trip abroad with his sisters, a really excellent reptile video, a pair of well-made cotton underpants.Throughout these essays - at once acerbic and tender, playful and profound - Sedaris shows how much there is to marvel at when you keep your head up and your eyes open, observing with warmth and curiosity our fascinating human species and the lands we inhabit.'Sedaris is the premier observer of our world and its weirdness' ADAM KAY'Wonderful' IAN McKELLEN'Unquestionably the king of comic writing' HADLEY FREEMAN'The funniest writer alive today' JONATHAN ROSS

Anyone that has read NAKED and BARREL FEVER, or heard David Sedaris speaking live or on the radio will tell you that a new collection from him is cause for jubilation. His recent move to Paris from New York inspired these hilarious new pieces, including 'Me Talk Pretty One Day', about his attempts to learn French from a sadistic teacher who declares that 'every day spent with you is like having a caesarean section'. His family is another inspiration. 'You Can't Kill the Rooster' is a portrait of his brother, who talks incessant hip-hop slang to his bewildered father. And no one hones a finer fury in response to such modern annoyances as restaurant meals presented in ludicrous towers of food and cashiers with six-inch fingernails.

När David Sedaris köper ett sommarställe nära havet ser han avkopplande semestrar, brädspel och bad framför sig. Och livet på The Sea Section, som han kallar det, är precis så idylliskt som han drömt om. Men en liten detalj kvarstår: det är omöjligt att ta semester från sig själv, och så gott som omöjligt att ta semester från sin familj. David Sedaris är en av de absolut populäraste skribenterna i USA idag, och skriver ofta dråpligt och brutalt ärligt om vår samtid. I sin senaste bok rannsakar han åldrande, politisk korrekthet och döden. Calypso är en både mörk och varm bok, och har blivit unisont hyllad av kritiker världen över. »Calypso är både roligare och mer hjärtskärande än någon annan bok på marknaden« Guardian

What could be a more tempting Christmas gift than a compendium of David Sedaris's best stories, selected by the author himself? From a spectacular career spanning almost three decades, these stories have become modern classics and are now for the first time collected in one volume.For more than twenty-five years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside. It opens our eyes to what is at absurd and moving about our daily existence. And it is almost impossible to read without laughing. Now, for the first time collected in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work. In these stories, Sedaris shops for rare taxidermy, hitchhikes with a lady quadriplegic, and spits a lozenge into a fellow traveler's lap. He drowns a mouse in a bucket, struggles to say 'give it to me' in five languages and hand-feeds a carnivorous bird.But if all you expect to find in Sedaris's work is the deft and sharply observed comedy for which he became renowned, you may be surprised to discover that his words bring more warmth than mockery, more fellow-feeling than derision. Nowhere is this clearer than in his writing about his loved ones. In these pages, Sedaris explores falling in love and staying together, recognizing his own aging not in the mirror but in the faces of his siblings, losing one parent and coming to terms - at long last - with the other.Taken together, the stories in The Best of Me reveal the wonder and delight Sedaris takes in the surprises life brings him. No experience, he sees, is quite as he expected - it's often harder, more fraught and certainly weirder - but sometimes it is also much richer and more wonderful.Full of joy, generosity, and the incisive humor that has led David Sedaris to be called 'the funniest man alive' (Time Out New York), The Best of Me spans a career spent watching and learning and laughing - quite often at himself - and invites readers deep into the world of one of the most brilliant and original writers of our time.

'Unquestionably the king of comic writing' Guardian'His best, funniest, most satisfying book' Time OutIn Dress Your Family in Corduroy & Denim, David Sedaris lifts the corner of ordinary life, revealing the absurdity teeming below its surface. His world is alive with obscure desires and hidden motives - a world where forgiveness is automatic and an argument can be the highest form of love. This book finds one of the wittiest and most original writers at work today at the peak of his powers. 'Sardonic, funny, and wry, but at the same time there is a new strain of introspection that makes for a book with more emotional resonance... A Chekhovian brand of comedy' New York Times'Like an updated Thurber: domestic, laconic, slightly warped but never bitter, and extremely funny' Sunday Times'A delight' Sunday Telegraph

'Sedaris is the premier observer of our world and its weirdnesses'ADAM KAY'Funnier and more heartbreaking than pretty much anything out there' HADLEY FREEMAN, GUARDIAN'The brilliance of David Sedaris' writing is that his very essence, his aura, seeps through the pages of his books like an intoxication cloud'ALAN CUMMING, NEW YORK TIMES'The funniest writer alive today' JONATHAN ROSS'An incredibly funny and sometimes moving meditation on love, death and family life' SUNDAY TIMESWhen he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realisation: it's impossible to take a vacation from yourself.

The author recounts hitchhiking across the country with an odd cast of quadriplegics and deadbeats, working as a migrant worker in North Carolina, and other adventures.

David Sedaris's remarkable ability to uncover the hilarious absurdity teeming just below the surface of everyday life is elevated to wilder and more entertaining heights than ever in this new book of stories.Sedaris proceeds from bizarre conundrums of daily life - the etiquette of having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a fellow passenger or how to soundproof your windows with LP covers against neurotic songbirds - to the most deeply resonant human truths. Taking in the parasitic worm that once lived in his mother-in-law's leg, an encounter with a dingo and the purchase of a human skeleton, and culminating in a brilliant account of his attempt to quit smoking - in Tokyo - David Sedaris's sixth story collection is a fresh masterpiece of comic writing.

A guy walks into a bar . . . From here the story could take many turns. A guy walks into a bar and meets the love of his life. A guy walks into a bar and finds no one else is there. When this guy is David Sedaris, the possibilities are endless. In Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, Sedaris delights with twists of humour and intelligence, remembering his father's dinnertime attire (shirtsleeves and underpants) his first colonoscopy (remarkably pleasant) and the time he considered buying the skeleton of a murdered pygmy. By turns hilarious and moving, David Sedaris masterfully looks at life's absurdities as he takes us on adventures that are not to be forgotten.