Books

Promoted Content

Teaching, Language & Reference

October 2025

Into being

The radical craft of memoir and its power to transform

by Lily Dunn

The acclaimed author of Sins of My Father shares the secrets of writing a new, transformative kind of memoir. Into being is an essential guide to writing memoir in a radical and empowering way. Drawing on her experience as a memoirist and a teacher of creative writing, Lily Dunn presents the ground-breaking idea that the craft of memoir itself can offer a form of transformation. Dunn demystifies the memoirist's art, helping readers to find meaning in raw experience and elevate the personal to the universal. She considers intriguing questions, from why our memories give greater significance to certain events to how we can write honestly without intruding too far into the lives of our loved ones. She also explores how writers are extending the memoir form to create something hybrid, playful and subversive. In an age of social media, filled with confessions, re-inventions and distortions of the self, the question of what it means to be an individual is more urgent than ever. Into being shows readers how to turn writing memoir into a journey of discovery - one that can be shared with the whole world.

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A ZEN MONK

by Taisen Deshimaru

A story of bravery and false starts, Autobiography of a Zen Monk candidly recounts the author’s development from a highly mischievous Japanese boy into a world-renowned Sensei (Teacher) of Zen. While countless memoirs exist written by Zen students and teachers, few are as engaging and as tantalizing as Taisen Deshimaru’s. Looking back at his early life, growing up in Japan, from the viewpoint of his status as a Zen teacher in Paris, the author reflects on his earliest misadventures—from defacing a valuable painting of Bodhidharma as a child, to turning the “Zen stick” on a young monk during a retreat. Adventures abound with stories about alcohol and women, during his student years, and his activities during World War II in working for the arms industry in Malaysia, where he was sympathetic to the underground freedom movement. This first English-language translation of Taisen Deshimaru’s autobiography will be prized for its clear and honest documentation of this great master’s life. Many people all over the world have been influenced by Deshimaru’s Zen teachings, especially his book on Zen and the martial arts. This memoir fills an important gap in our knowledge of his teacher, Kodo Sawaki’s influence on the world of Zen. The story of how Deshimaru met Sawaki as a boy, even slept in the same room with him, and later received monastic ordination is the story of a lifelong friendship of two extraordinary characters in the history of modern Zen. Deshimaru’s influence extends beyond Zen practitioners, though, especially in those interested in the martial arts, as he touches on his martial arts experience as a young man and offers a look into the master’s early training. Additional interest extends to historians who recount the supposed “scandals” of Zen masters’ participation in the war effort. Although Deshimaru’s viewpoint is decidedly subjective, he was intimately acquainted with priests and generals alike, and approaches the difficult subject with a refreshing lack of judgmental disdain which counterbalances many other more lopsided works. Translator, Richard Collins, a longtime Zen practitioner, and currently the Abbot of the New Orleans Zen Temple, is a literature scholar and author of several books including No Fear Zen, Hohm Press, 2014. His knowledge of the subject matter and his finesse with language combine to make this book a delightful read for those who appreciate wellwritten memoir.

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Biography & True Stories

March 2022

Body Work

The Radical Power of Personal Narrative

by Melissa Febos,

In this bold and exhilarating mix of memoir and writing guide, Melissa Febos tackles the emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing intimately while offering an utterly fresh examination of the storyteller's life and the challenges it presents. How do we write about the relationships that have formed us? How do we describe our bodies, their desires and traumas? What does it mean to have your writing, or living, dismissed as "navel-gazing"-or else hailed as "so brave, so raw"? And to whom, in the end, do our most intimate stories belong? Drawing on her journey from aspiring writer to acclaimed author and writing professor-via addiction and recovery, sex work and academia-Melissa Febos has created a captivating guide to the writing life, and a brilliantly unusual exploration of subjectivity, privacy, and the power of divulgence. Candid and inspiring, Body Work will empower readers and writers alike, offering ideas-and occasional notes of caution-to anyone who has ever hoped to see their true self reflecting back from the open page.

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Biography & True Stories

March 2022

Body Work

The Radical Power of Personal Narrative

by Melissa Febos,

In this bold and exhilarating mix of memoir and writing guide, Melissa Febos tackles the emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing intimately while offering an utterly fresh examination of the storyteller's life and the challenges it presents. How do we write about the relationships that have formed us? How do we describe our bodies, their desires and traumas? What does it mean to have your writing, or living, dismissed as "navel-gazing"-or else hailed as "so brave, so raw"? And to whom, in the end, do our most intimate stories belong? Drawing on her journey from aspiring writer to acclaimed author and writing professor-via addiction and recovery, sex work and academia-Melissa Febos has created a captivating guide to the writing life, and a brilliantly unusual exploration of subjectivity, privacy, and the power of divulgence. Candid and inspiring, Body Work will empower readers and writers alike, offering ideas-and occasional notes of caution-to anyone who has ever hoped to see their true self reflecting back from the open page.

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Biography & True Stories

March 2022

Body Work

The Radical Power of Personal Narrative

by Melissa Febos,

In this bold and exhilarating mix of memoir and writing guide, Melissa Febos tackles the emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing intimately while offering an utterly fresh examination of the storyteller's life and the challenges it presents. How do we write about the relationships that have formed us? How do we describe our bodies, their desires and traumas? What does it mean to have your writing, or living, dismissed as "navel-gazing"-or else hailed as "so brave, so raw"? And to whom, in the end, do our most intimate stories belong? Drawing on her journey from aspiring writer to acclaimed author and writing professor-via addiction and recovery, sex work and academia-Melissa Febos has created a captivating guide to the writing life, and a brilliantly unusual exploration of subjectivity, privacy, and the power of divulgence. Candid and inspiring, Body Work will empower readers and writers alike, offering ideas-and occasional notes of caution-to anyone who has ever hoped to see their true self reflecting back from the open page.

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Diaries, letters & journals

2020

Narbut. Studies. Memoirs. Letters [A Supplemented Reproduction of the "Narbut Anthology", destroyed in 1933]

by Bohdan Zavitii (compiler)

This story behind this biographical memoir of a great artist begins before Narbut’s death. The best-known experts were invited to participate and contribute articles, which they spent many years preparing. But the Soviet censors “trimmed” the texts to their liking. When it was finally published in 1933, nearly all the authors had been repressed or executed. The anthology went under the knife at the printing press. It was a shame, too, because the paper was beautiful, specially allotted by the state printing press, as was the print. Only two incomplete copies remain, both in private collections. Serhii Bilokin first proposed the idea of the Narbut Anthology to Rodovid Press ten years ago, and now it is finally came to fruition with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation. This is thanks to Bohdan Zavitii, Anastasia Bilousova, and entire project team including designers Sasha Bychenko, Oleksii Salnykov, and Alina Bielova. The Institute of Art History, Folklore, and Ethnology, the National Art Museum of Ukraine, the Kharkiv Art Museum, and others assisted with the illustrations and texts. Heorhii Narbut was a decisive figure in twentieth-century Ukrainian art, yet the Communist taboos of the Soviet period ensured he remained unknown to a broader audience. This unique project fleshes out a significant aspect of art history and puts certain things back where they belong. Content and introduction: Serhii Bilokin Editors: Anastasiia Bilousova and Bohdan Zavitii Design: Sasha Bychenko and Numo Team

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Memoirs

2001

I, Me, and Myself... (and around): Memoires

by Yuriy Shevelyov

The first volume of memoirs of the outstanding Ukrainian scholar Yuriy Shevelyov (Sherekh) is an invaluable source for understanding Ukrainian history of the first half of the twentieth century. The publication is first illustrated and contains 248 photographs; part of them - from the Shevelyov family album - is published for the first time. The text is complemented by 1626 notes and a name index. The preface is written by the compiler of the publication, Mr. Serhiy Vakulenko.

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Biography & True Stories

2016

The Universe behind Barbed Wire: Memoirs and Reflections of a Dissident

by Myroslav Marynovych

The author of the book served 10 years in prison in a concentration camp and was in exile in Brezhnev times for participating in the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Group (UHG). It was the first legal, not underground, group of the Resistance Movement, which, acting for a long time, revealed to the whole world the situation with the human rights in Ukraine under the Soviet rule. Born in Galicia after the World War 2 and brought up in a Soviet school, the author shows in his memoirs the role of the Galician family in shaping the position of resistance to the totalitarian regime. He tells vigorously, interestingly and frankly about life in Kiev under the Soviets in the era of the Helsinki movement, about the activities of the UHG and its members, about unjust arrests, and Soviet crooked justice. He recounts in detail the life of political prisoners in a concentration camp, describes the circumstances of his exile in Kazakhstan. He pays great attention to the spiritual growth of a person, shares his reflections on dissidence and the nature of totalitarianism. And conclusively, he condemns the communist system.

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The Dukduk's Whimper

by Jalal Barjas

An IPAF winner’s memoir on his formation as a writer and reader Our lives are essentially a story and we are the characters. “The Duduk’s Whimper” is story of Jalal Barjas, beginning with his birth in 1970 and ending in 2021. His story is inspired by his life as a human being and a writer with little time at his disposal. It is a life that intersects with many others in our Arab world. The idea for this biography/novel was born out of a question the author asked about his motivations for reading, writing, and traveling. The result is a candid, bold narrative that presents his image to the reader without idealism or heroism. This memoir unfolds along three lines: the biography of the writer, the stories of three places, and the tale of three books he read. Through these narratives, Barjas reveals unknown aspects of his life and the difficult path he had to take to reach his esteemed position in the literary world. He takes us on an entertaining and profound journey with a high level of language that reveals many aspects that are not only relevant to him, but also to everyone who reads this book. It delves deeply into reading, writing, travel, love, failure, success, and the formation of human joys and sorrows starting from childhood. “The Duduk’s Whimper” is the story of a writer who only has three hours a day to write, yet he managed to establish himself as one of the great writers.

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Mind, Body, Spirit

FROM MEDIC TO MYSTIC

The True Story of an Academic Physician’s Journey into the Paranormal

by Dr Anona Blackwell

In this candid memoir, Dr. Anona Blackwell shares her remarkable journey from orthodox-trained medic to unapologetic mystic. Chronicling her dual professional life as a highly respected, Lancet-published academic physician while also investigating powerful psychic and paranormal experiences in her work and personal life, Dr. Blackwell presents compelling evidence for telepathy, clairvoyance, near-death experiences (NDEs), life after death, the power of prayer, non-ordinary reality, and more. By sharing her forays into non-ordinary reality Dr. Blackwell encourages others to share their own paranormal experiences.

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True stories

2018

History's Carnival

by Leonid Plyushch

A memoir and autobiography of Ukrainian mathematician Leonid Pliushch (1939-2015), one of the most famous dissidents of the USSR. It was first published in the West in 1979 in five languages (Russian, French, English, Italian and Ukrainian) and it belongs to the "treasury" of anti-totalitarian resistance literature. Analyzing his life path from his postwar childhood to the Dnipropetrovsk psychiatric prison, where he was thrown with the beginning of repressions in 1972, Leonid Pliushch creates an invaluable panoramic portrait of the generation of "sixties", which was given a chance to free their mind from authoritarianism. The text is presented in the author's edition of 2002 with appendices and foreword by Oksana Zabuzhko.

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Biography: general

2021

Serhiy Paradzhanov. Bigger than a Legend

by Dziuba Ivan, Dziuba Marta

The book by Ivan and Marta Dzyuba consists of texts (memoir essays, articles and interviews) that comment on the life and work of Serhiy Paradzhanov, one of the most outstanding and original artists of Ukraine and the world. His image is made up of myths and mythologemes, mostly created by Paradzhanov himself. The authors of the book expand this image by supplementing it with details of everyday life, visualisations and conceptual interpretations of the filmmakers’ actions, in both everyday and artistic life. This book also gives the reader an idea of how Parajanov's artistic universe was formed, how he transitioned from a film director who worked with the myths of communist ideology to an artist who spoke the language of national mythologies in avant-garde and surprisingly modern way.

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The Arts

January 2016

Face: shape and angle

Helen Muspratt, photographer

by Jessica Sutcliffe

Born into a civil service family in India in 1907, Helen Muspratt was a lifelong communist, a member of the Cambridge intellectual milieu of the 1930s, and a working mother at a time when such a role was unusual for women of her class. She was also a pioneering photographer, creating an extraordinary body of work in many different styles and genres. In partnership with Lettice Ramsey she made portraits of many notable figures of the 1930s in the fields of science and culture. Her experimental photography, using techniques such as solarisation and multiple exposure, bears comparison with the innovations of Man Ray and Lee Miller. This book reproduces some of Helen Muspratt's most important photographic images, including documentary records of the Soviet Union and the Welsh valleys. The accompanying text by Jessica Sutcliffe is an intimate and revealing memoir of her mother that offers a fascinating insight into her life, work and politics. ;

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History of Art / Art & Design Styles

July 2015

Porous boundaries

Art and essays

by Edited by David Peters Corbett, Cyril Reade

This innovative and exciting volume celebrates the career of Janet Wolff: a highly influential voice in the literature of sociology, cultural studies, visual studies and art history, as well as dance and modernism for several decades. Her work has significantly contributed to the way we view issues as diverse as modernism, the flâneur, British and American art in the early twentieth century, and the gendered literature of modernity. The volume contains contributions from a number of Janet Wolff's collaborators and others who are associated with the fields in which she has worked, including Zygmunt Bauman, Walid Raad and Griselda Pollock. The book includes original artworks, memoir and essays inspired by her example and which deal with questions she has discussed. The book will be of interest to academics and postgraduate students in any of these disciplines, as well as those interested by the form of a transatlantic academic career.

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February 2014

The Beijing Drifters

by Tan Xilin

This is an autobiographical memoir of a Beijing drifter. The book takes the author as a true experience of the North drift tribe as the main content, with the author's career struggle as the main line, and Xin Er's love as a vice-line, focusing on the author in the CCTV as extra-section director, after the column is withdrawn and End of the experience of the North drift and in the meantime and Xin Er from the beautiful encounter, dedication fell in love to emotion derailed, and finally sadly break up the love life, revealing the media as the representative of many North drift ethnic identity embarrassment and hard-won. The book closely linked to the "drifting" word, not only a real record of the Northern drift ethnic working life, at the same time reflects this group in the huge psychological gap between dreams and reality, a true description of the generation of North Drift carrying sweet dreams struggle Story and dream course.

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Geography & the Environment

October 2025

Drifting north

Finding the future at the top of the world

by Dominic Hinde

Scotland's past and future collide in this engaging journey through climate change, fossil capitalism and the struggle for a sustainable world. Scotland's history and future are entangled with climate change and the story of the modern world. This small country on the fringes of northern Europe pioneered fossil capitalism and played a key role in its spread across the planet. It is a living museum of the crisis of the west, of deindustrialisation, stagnation and the struggle to build a better future from the ashes. Journalist and sociologist Dominic Hinde travels from the treeless Highlands to the lowland cities, struggling to balance memories with aspiration. Through this journey he finds that his own sensory turmoil, shaped by recovery from a near fatal accident, mirrors the disarray of the fossil fuel transition - an uncertain passage between what was and what must be. Part memoir, part environmental history, part travelogue, this is a compelling narrative of connections - to place, energy and the possibility of renewal. Through the lens of one country, it asks a vital question: can the lessons of the past help us build a more sustainable future?

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Biography & True Stories

May 2023

The invisible painting

by Gabriel Weisz Carrington, Jonathan P. Eburne

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Biography & True Stories

2020

The Torture Camp on Paradise Street

by Stanislav Aseyev

There is a prison operating in present-day Ukraine, where horrific torture techniques are being utilized. This prison is, in reality, a concentration camp, beyond whose fencing no laws reach. Life there is lived in humiliation, fear, and uncertainty. Wounds and burn marks cover bodies that are filled with pain from broken bones and, often too, broken wills. The principal tasks here are surviving after the desire to live has forsaken you and nothing in the world depends on you any longer, preserving your sanity as you teeter on the brink of madness, and remaining a human being in conditions so inhuman that faith, forgiveness, hate, and even a torturer locking eyes with his victim become laden with manifold meanings. The journalist Stanislav Aseyev, imprisoned in this torture camp on trumped-up charges of “espionage,” wrote this frank, emotional, and probing memoir in an attempt to both survive and recover from the hell he was cast into. He offers more questions than answers in this book, as testament to the fact that the lives of those released from the prison at 3 Paradise Street will forever remain divided into “pre-” and “post-.”

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Biography & True Stories

November 2024

Walking in the dark

James Baldwin, my father and I

by Douglas Field

A moving exploration of the life and work of the celebrated American writer, blending biography and memoir with literary criticism. Since James Baldwin's death in 1987, his writing - including The Fire Next Time, one of the manifestoes of the Civil Rights Movement, and Giovanni's Room, a pioneering work of gay fiction - has only grown in relevance. Douglas Field was introduced to Baldwin's essays and novels by his father, who witnessed the writer's debate with William F. Buckley at Cambridge University in 1965. In Walking in the dark, he embarks on a journey to unravel his life-long fascination and to understand why Baldwin continues to enthral us decades after his death. Tracing Baldwin's footsteps in France, the US and Switzerland, and digging into archives, Field paints an intimate portrait of the writer's life and influence. At the same time, he offers a poignant account of coming to terms with his father's Alzheimer's disease. Interweaving Baldwin's writings on family, illness, memory and place, Walking in the dark is an eloquent testament to the enduring power of great literature to illuminate our paths.

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January 1983

The Memoires of a Syrian Prince

Abu'l-Fida', Sultan of Hamah (672-732/1273-1331). Translation with an Introduction

by Herausgegeben von Holt, P. M.

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The radical craft of memoir and its power to transform

by Lily Dunn

by Taisen Deshimaru

The Radical Power of Personal Narrative

by Melissa Febos,

The Radical Power of Personal Narrative

by Melissa Febos,

The Radical Power of Personal Narrative

by Melissa Febos,

by Bohdan Zavitii (compiler)

by Yuriy Shevelyov

by Myroslav Marynovych

by Jalal Barjas

The True Story of an Academic Physician’s Journey into the Paranormal

by Dr Anona Blackwell

by Leonid Plyushch

by Dziuba Ivan, Dziuba Marta

Helen Muspratt, photographer

by Jessica Sutcliffe

Art and essays

by Edited by David Peters Corbett, Cyril Reade

by Tan Xilin

Finding the future at the top of the world

by Dominic Hinde

by Gabriel Weisz Carrington, Jonathan P. Eburne

by Stanislav Aseyev

James Baldwin, my father and I

by Douglas Field

Abu'l-Fida', Sultan of Hamah (672-732/1273-1331). Translation with an Introduction

by Herausgegeben von Holt, P. M.

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