Like many people, I have experienced my share of suffering. I have also spent a lifetime exploring the suffering of others through great works of literature and art. My attraction to Japanese literatureâimbued with a Buddhist sensitivity to lossâreflects my taste for the melancholy beauty of works of art that transmute suffering into aesthetic form. The qualities I find in Japanese literature are in wonderfully long supply in writings from around the world. My list of favorite books is a small testament to that aesthetic work which has the potential to heal us.
I have never read a more profoundly sad but philosophically wise novel about the complex bonds of friendship and how the betrayal of those bonds and of oneâs own authentic feelings leads to loneliness and even anguish.
I first read this great Japanese masterwork, written by Japan's greatest writer of fiction, over forty years ago, and I revisit it every year, both for the life lessons it continues to teach and for its literary beautyâwhich only deepens with time.
"The novel sustains throughout its length something approaching poetry, and it is rich in understanding and insight. The translation, by Edwin McClellan, is extremely good." âAnthony West, The New Yorker
Kokoro, which means "the heart of things," explores emotions familiar to everyoneâlove and hate, hope and despair, companionship and loneliness.
Sensei, a man seen against the rich background of old Japan entering the modern era, is outwardly successful. He has position, wealth, a charming wife. But deep in the heart of things, he is harried with a profound sense of isolation whose cure lies only in "faith, madness, or death."âŚ
For anyone who has been shattered by a terrible loss and could not imagine a road to recovery, this intimate, poetic, and philosophically astute exploration of bereavement, of the mental ravages brought on by the loss of a child, will be a bracing and transformative reading experience.
This short and brilliant book has forever changed how I understand what it means to grieve and to master oneâs sufferingâit makes you feel less alone.
'One of the most eloquent thinkers about our life in language' The Sunday Times
Time Lived, Without Its Flow is a beautiful, unflinching essay on the nature of grief from critically acclaimed poet Denise Riley. From the horrific experience of maternal grief Riley wrote her celebrated collection Say Something Back, a modern classic of British poetry. This essay is a companion piece to that work, looking at the way time stops when we lose someone suddenly from our lives.
The first half is formed of diary-like entries written by Riley after the news of her son's death, the entries buildingâŚ
Chasing Light is a lyrical meditation on grief, memory, and the fragile beauty of everyday life. At its core, it is a story of resilience, forgiveness, and the transformational power of human connection. It sheds light on the overlooked realities of homelessness and addiction, while emphasizing the importance of compassionâŚ
Though I am not religious, I have been aesthetically moved and spiritually stirred by these deeply personal, profoundly philosophical, and poetically enigmatic essays, which I find myself returning to when faced with the most fundamental questions about our spiritual lives.
Written by a French Jewish convert to Christianity whose own suffering is exquisitely attuned to the suffering of others, these essays have continued to inspire readers from across a broad spectrum of religious and philosophical orientationsâincluding the most secular among us.
Gravity and Grace was the first ever publication by the remarkable thinker and activist, Simone Weil. In it Gustave Thibon, the farmer to whom she had entrusted her notebooks before her untimely death, compiled in one remarkable volume a compendium of her writings that have become a source of spiritual guidance and wisdom for countless individuals. On the fiftieth anniversary of the first English edition - by Routledge & Kegan Paul in 1952 - this Routledge Classics edition offers English readers the complete text of this landmark work for the first time ever, by incorporating a specially commissioned translation ofâŚ
Reading these messages in a bottle discovered buried under a Nazi concentration camp in 1945, I am staggered and amazed at the indomitable human capacity for resilience and creativity.
I read these harrowing literary masterworks, which report on the most hellish degradations, and I am stunned that Zalmen Gradowski, from deep within his suffering, could wrest from the horrors before him and from his own despair, a literary art that is beautiful and solacing. I am reminded of the human capacity, which we all must certainly share, to snatch shreds of beauty from the darkest of circumstances and of the human hope that somewhere beyond oneâs own hell lives a sympathetic ear.
A unique and haunting first-person Holocaust account by Zalmen Gradowski, a Sonderkommando prisoner killed in Auschwitz.
On October 7, 1944, a group of Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz obtained explosives and rebelled against their Nazi murderers. It was a desperate uprising that was defeated by the end of the day. More than four hundred prisoners were killed. Filling a gap in history, The Last Consolation Vanished is the first complete English translation and critical edition of one prisoner's powerful account of life and death in Auschwitz, written in Yiddish and buried in the ashes near Crematorium III.
Malcolm Before X is about finding a way to continue moving forward after everything has been taken from you. While in prison, Malcolm Little discovered the power of reading and found a way to transform his character and become a better man. This half-biography focuses on that transformation, especially hisâŚ
Who among us has never felt shame? Who has never felt oneâs spirit crushed? I myself have returned for relief from that periodic loss of inner spirit to this brave, unsentimental memoir of the ravages on Lucy Grealyâs face of a disease that condemned her to a punishing self-loathing.
Reading this boldly unabashed memoir of conquering shame, of finding an âinner eyeâ (and inner life) that could come to see as beautiful what the seeing eyes of the world saw only as ugly, I have felt buoyed by the possibility of reclaiming your own true self against the ravages of a hostile world.Â
"Grealy has turned her misfortune into a book that is engaging and engrossing, a story of grace as well as cruelty, and a demonstration of her own wit and style and class."âWashington Post Book World
âIt is impossible to read Autobiography of a Face without having your consciousness raised forever.â â Mirabella
In this celebrated memoir and exploration of identity, cancer transforms the authorâs face, childhood, and the rest of her life.
At age nine, Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with a potentially terminal cancer. When she returned to school with a third of herâŚ
With a history stretching back nearly 1500 years, Japanese literature, imbued with the spirt of Buddhism and deeply influenced by Chinese and European literature and thought, is one of the worldâs great and most thriving literary traditions.
This very short introduction to that rich tradition treats singular masterpieces such as Lady Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji (the worldâs first novel), the long and rich tradition of womenâs poetry and fiction, theories of poetry and fiction, NĂ´ theater, erotica, the modern novel, and literary responses to historical upheaval and violent catastrophe, and personal, existential suffering.
What do Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, and Jerry Seinfeld have in common? They were all devotees of George Carlin.
In my book, I take a deep dive into the comedic artistry of one of America's most important funny men. George Carlin was the king of all media: print, recordings, movies,âŚ
During the First World War, an extraordinary intelligence unit operated from Cairo's Savoy Hotel, combining archaeologists, academics, and soldiers to revolutionize British intelligence in the Middle East. Overshadowed by Lawrence of Arabia, the Arab Bureau's significance has remained hidden ever since.
This study uncovers the Bureau's story through newly discoveredâŚ
