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  • Published: 20 March 2013
  • ISBN: 9780141969022
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 320

The Silence of Animals

On Progress and Other Modern Myths




A powerful, beautiful and chilling new book from the bestselling author of Straw Dogs

Gray draws on an extraordinary array of memoirs, poems, fiction and philosophy to make us re-imagine our place in the world. Writers as varied as Ballard, Borges, Freud and Conrad are mesmerised by forms of human extremity - experiences on the outer edge of the possible, or which tip into fantasy and myth. What happens to us when we starve, when we fight, when we are imprisoned? And how do our imaginations leap into worlds way beyond our real experience?

The Silence of Animals is consistently fascinating, filled with unforgettable images and a delight in the conundrum of our existence - an existence which we decorate with countless myths and ideas, where we twist and turn to avoid acknowledging that we too are animals, separated from the others perhaps only by our self-conceit. In the Babel we have created for ourselves, it is the silence of animals that both reproaches and bewitches us.

  • Published: 20 March 2013
  • ISBN: 9780141969022
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 320

About the author

John Gray

John Gray's most recent books are Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals , Al-Qaeda and What It Means To Be Modern  and Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions. He is Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics.

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