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Books
currently recommended by Salley Vickers:
BOOKS
OF THE YEAR
As a Man Booker judge I've rather had my fill of fiction this year
but THE CITY OF YOUR FINAL DESTINATION by Peter Cameron (4th Estate)
has stayed in my mind as unpretentious, beautifully written and
with an unfashionably happy end. In non-fiction, I admired Will
Fiennes' engaging THE SNOW GEESE (Picador). Inspired by Paul Gallico's
classic, Fiennes makes the subject his own while enhancing the source
he pays homage to. Carole Angier's PRIMO LEVI (Penguin) deepened
my understanding of an extraordinary life. Anthony Stevens' intriguing
ARCHETYPES REVISITED (Routledge) is that rare thing, a literate
book by a psychiatrist.
Appeared
Observer Nov 23rd 2002
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THE
DOUBLE BOND: Primo Levi, A Biography by Carole Angier |
| Primo
Levi was one of the most awe-inspring men of the twentieth
century and one for whom I have long had the greatest respect
and admiration. His meditations on his experiences of Auschwitz
are a remarkable testimony to the capacity of people, of exceptional
quality, to suffer, endure and embrace with compelling meaning
the atrocities perpetrated on them by others who also go by
the ambiguous name of 'human'. But although he survived the
Nazi concentration camps he did not survive his own inner
tormentors and finally took his own life. Carole Angier has
written an impressive and searching account of Levi's life,
to include fascinating analysis of his work as poet and writer
and its part in his inimitably tragic yet exhilarating story. |
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Hardcover
- 928 pages (19 March, 2002)
Viking; ISBN: 0670883336 |
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THE
SNOW GEESE by William Fiennes |
A
moving and unusual account of one man's obsession with the Snow
geese and his tracking of them to the Canadian Arctic. As a
lover of birds myself (cf my own 'Instances of the Number 3)
I am hugely enjoying this intelligent and observant book with
its delicate homage to Gallico's original 'Snow Goose'.
See the review |
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Picador,
March 2002 ISBN 0 330 37578 4 |
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