Book description
'A gigantic book on a gigantic theme' Sunday Times 'Aphoristic and
acutely provocative: a crash course in civilization' J. M. Coetzee With
three new essays and an introduction to the extras from the author, the
special edition eBook adds new depth to an already absorbing book. A
lifetime in the making, Cultural Amnesia is the book Clive James has
always wanted to write. Organized from A through to Z, and containing
over 100 essays, it's the ultimate guide to the twentieth century,
illuminating the careers of many of its greatest thinkers, humanists,
musicians, artists and philosophers. From Louis Armstrong to Ludwig
Wittgenstein, via Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka and Marcel
Proust, it's a book for our times - and, indeed, for all time. 'Clive
James is one of the most ingeniously stimulating literary critics now
writing in English. Cultural Amnesia, with its encyclopedic length and
organization and the intense jostle of its ideas, is to be dipped into
over weeks and months. If the dipper occasionally brings up
exasperation, it brings up astonished delight far more often; and, best
of all, exasperated astonished delight' Boston Globe
Clive James is the author of more than twenty books. As well as
essays, he has published collections of literary and television
criticism, travel writing, verse and novels, plus three volumes of
autobiography. In 1992 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia
and in 2003 he was awarded the Philip Hodgins memorial medal for
literature.
