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Published Oct 2016
240 pages
Genre: Essays
Publication Information
A new collection from "one of the world's great essayists" (The New York Times).
The Ghosts of Birds offers thirty-five essays by Eliot Weinberger: the first section of the book continues his linked serial-essay, An Elemental Thing, which pulls the reader into "a vortex for the entire universe" (Boston Review). Here, Weinberger chronicles a nineteenth-century journey down the Colorado River, records the dreams of people named Chang, and shares other factually verifiable discoveries that seem too fabulous to possibly be true.
The second section collects Weinberger's essays on a wide range of subjects - some of which have been published in Harper's, New York Review of Books, and London Review of Books - including his notorious review of George W. Bush's memoir Decision Points and writings about Mongolian art and poetry, different versions of the Buddha, American Indophilia ("There is a line, however jagged, from pseudo-Hinduism to Malcolm X"), Béla Balázs, Herbert Read, and Charles Reznikoff.
This collection proves once again that Weinberger is "one of the bravest and sharpest minds in the United States" (Javier Marías).
"This slim volume from Weinberger (The Walls, the City, and the World), a prodigious translator, editor, and author, provides abundant rewards for readers in essays that are short, dense, and rich with meanings and ideas." - Publishers Weekly
"Weinberger says of the I Ching, "its fragments and aphorisms are meant to be dipped into at random." One might say the same of this book, which dazzles as a repository of knowledge and interpretation but otherwise may be an acquired taste." - Kirkus
"One remains in silent amazement: How does he find these stories? How does he know everything?" - Die Zeit (Germany)
"Our personal favorite for the Nobel Prize." - Rolling Stone (Germany)
"As is often the case with brilliant writers, an Eliot Weinberger sentence cannot be mistaken for that of anyone else." - Australian Book Review
"A master of the infinite commentary on the astonishing variety of the world … I envy those who have not yet discovered him." - Enrique Vila-Matas
"The brilliant net of details that Weinberger casts and recasts in his various inventive approaches to form is precisely what constitutes a superlative poetic imagination. And it's what holds the essays - and us - trembling and raging and hallucinating together." - Forrest Gander
This information about The Ghosts of Birds was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Eliot Weinberger is an essayist and translator, the editor of The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry, and the series editor of Calligrams: Writings from and on China (New York Review Books and Chinese University of Hong Kong Press). He lives in New York City.
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