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Published Oct 2017
360 pages
Genre: Essays
Publication Information
An irresistible collection of favorite writings from an author celebrated for his bravura style and sheer unpredictability.
Francis Spufford's welcome first volume of collected essays gathers an array of his compelling writings from the 1990s to the present. He makes use of a variety of encounters with particular places, writers, or books to address deeper questions relating to the complicated relationship between story-telling and truth-telling. How must a nonfiction writer imagine facts, vivifying them to bring them to life? How must a novelist create a dependable world of story, within which facts are, in fact, imaginary? And how does a religious faith felt strongly to be true, but not provably so, draw on both kinds of writerly imagination?
Ranging freely across topics as diverse as the medieval legends of Cockaigne, the Christian apologetics of C. S. Lewis, and the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini, Spufford provides both fresh observations and thought-provoking insights. No less does he inspire an irresistible urge to turn the page and read on.
"Starred Review. Spufford fits no cookie-cutter definition: he is journalist and scholar, science lover and Christian, word lover and poet, and his writing satisfies deeply." - Publishers Weekly
"A bibliophagist snacks and dines, sharing with us some of the tastiest bits." - Kirkus
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Francis Spufford began as the author of four highly praised books of nonfiction. His first book, I May Be Some Time, won the Writers' Guild Award for Best Nonfiction Book of 1996, the Banff Mountain Book Prize, and a Somerset Maugham Award. It was followed by The Child That Books Built, Backroom Boys, and most recently, Unapologetic. But with Red Plenty in 2012 he switched to the novel. Golden Hill won multiple literary prizes on both sides of the Atlantic; Light Perpetual was longlisted for the Booker Prize. In England he is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Historical Society. He teaches writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Author Interview
Link to Francis Spufford's Website
Name Pronunciation
Francis Spufford: SPUFF-ord (rhymes with stuff)
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