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  • Published: 22 October 2018
  • ISBN: 9781448162659
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 432

Memory




A packed, provocative anthology on a subject close to us all, with analyses of memory (and forgetting) ranging from childhood recollections to the latest neuroscience, Plato to Freud, medieval poets to London taxi drivers.

This fascinating anthology introduces us to a wide range of arguments on the subject of memory, the thread that holds our lives, and our history, together. Arranged in themed sections, the book includes specially commissioned essays by the editors and by writers with expertise in different fields - from 'Memory and Evolution' by Patrick Bateson to 'Memory and Forgetting' by the biographer Richard Holmes, and an account of the chemistry of the brain by Steven Rose.

Complementing the essays are a rich selection of extracts from writers and thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle, Montaigne and Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Proust, Jorge Luis Borges and Haruki Murakami. Stimulating, provocative, funny or profoundly moving, Memory is a book to treasure - and remember.

  • Published: 22 October 2018
  • ISBN: 9781448162659
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 432

About the authors

Harriet Harvey Wood

Harriet Harvey Wood is the former Head of Literature at the British Council and AS Byatt's is pre-eminent as a novelist and critic: her most recent novel is A Whistling Woman.

A S Byatt

A.S. Byatt is a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children’s Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her ‘inspiring contribution to life writing’ and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.

Praise for Memory

A book for the magpies among us, designed to be dipped in to time after time ... absorbing anthology

Sunday Herald

A fascinating and topical encyclopaedia on a little understood subject... a forensic strike at the quivering fragility of what and how we remember

Big Issue

An intriguing anthology

Independent

Engaging...constantly surprising

Scotland on Sunday

One to dip into again and again

Express

Open-minded and inclusive

Time Out

Rich and thought-provoking... What is appealing about this anthology (and I write as someone who on the whole dislikes them) is that it not only gives examples of the myriad responses that memory evokes but it offers theories that try to account for it

The Times

The appeal of this scholarly and thoughtful anthology is that it juxtaposes glancing insights with painstaking research... the two introductions... display something of the combined tastes and talents that have gone into this fascinating compilation

Penelope Lively, Financial Times

Wonderful...this anthology has a pleasingly flow-like feel...fascinating...it takes a wide view of the subject

Giles Foden, Guardian