Olivia Laing Livres

Acclaimed author Olivia Laing examines the life of renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to chart an electrifying course through the great freedom movements of the twentieth century.

The Garden Against Time is the No.1 Sunday Times bestseller from acclaimed writer Olivia Laing; a passionate, epic exploration of the power and possibilities of gardens. 'What a wonderful book this is' - Nigel Slater When Olivia Laing began to restore a walled garden in Suffolk, an overgrown Eden of unusual plants, the work drew them into an exhilarating investigation of paradise and its long association with gardens. Moving between the real and the imagined, from Milton's Paradise Lost to a wartime sanctuary in Italy, to a grotesque aristocratic pleasure ground funded by slavery, Laing interrogates the sometimes shocking cost of making paradise on earth. But the story of the garden can also be a place of rebel outposts and communal dreams, from the improbable queer utopia conjured by Derek Jarman on the beach at Dungeness to the vision of a common Eden cultivated by William Morris. New modes of living can and have been attempted amidst the flower beds, experiments that could prove vital in the coming era of radical change. 'This book is what we need right now: paradise, regained' - Philip Hoare 'Every generation gets one perfect book about gardens and this is ours' - Julia Bell 'Prepare yourself to be enchanted' - Jilly Cooper 'The most magical writing' - Jeremy Lee 'I felt doubly alive after reading it' - Celia Paul 'Quite literally unputdownable' - Jinny Blom 'A book for thinking gardeners everywhere' - Mary Keen

Olivia Laing, prize-winning, bestselling author of The Lonely City and Crudo, returns with a career-spanning collection of essays on the power of art in times of crisis.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 GORDON BURN PRIZECHOSEN AS 'BOOK OF THE YEAR' BYObserverGuardianTelegraphIrish TimesNew StatesmanTimes Literary SupplementHeraldWhen Olivia Laing moved to New York City in her mid-thirties, she found herself inhabiting loneliness on a daily basis. Increasingly fascinated by this most shameful of experiences, she began to explore the lonely city by way of art. Moving fluidly between the works and lives of some of the city's most compelling artists, Laing conducts an electric, dazzling investigation into what it means to be alone, illuminating not only the causes of loneliness but also how it might be resisted and redeemed.

To the River is the story of the Ouse, the Sussex river in which Virginia Woolf drowned in 1941. One midsummer week over sixty years later, Olivia Laing walked Woolf's river from source to sea. The result is a passionate investigation into how history resides in a landscape - and how ghosts never quite leave the places they love. Along the way, Laing explores the roles rivers play in human lives, tracing their intricate flow through literature and mythology alike. To the River excavates all sorts of stories from the Ouse's marshy banks, from the brutal Barons' War of the thirteenth century to the 'Dinosaur Hunters', the nineteenth-century amateur naturalists who first cracked the fossil code. Central among these ghosts is, of course, Virginia Woolf herself: her life, her writing and her watery death. Woolf is the most constant companion on Laing's journey, and To the River can be read in part as a biography of this extraordinary English writer, refracted back through the river she loved. But other writers float through these pages too - among them Iris Murdoch, Shakespeare, Homer and Kenneth Grahame, author of the riverside classic The Wind in the Willows. The result is a wonderfully discursive read - which interweaves biography, history, nature writing and memoir, driven by Laing's deep understanding of science and cultural history. It's a beautiful, lyrical work that marks the arrival of a major new writer.

Originally published: Great Britain: Canongate Books, 2013.

A commitment-phobic writer spends the summer of 2017--the first summer of her forties--adjusting to the idea of getting married at a time when truth is dead, fascism is rising, and one rogue tweet from the president could launch a nuclear war.

В тридцать с лишним лет переехав в Нью-Йорк по причине романтических отношений, Оливия Лэнг в итоге оказалась одна в огромном чужом городе. Этот наипостыднейший жизненный опыт завораживал ее всё сильнее, и она принялась исследовать одинокий город через искусство. Разбирая случаи Эдварда Хоппера, Энди Уорхола, Клауса Номи, Генри Дарджера и Дэвида Войнаровича, прославленная эссеистка и критик изучает упражнения в искусстве одиночества, разбирает его образы и социально-психологическую природу отчуждения. Человечный, дерзкий и глубоко проникновенный «Одинокий город» — книга о пространствах между людьми, о вещах, которые соединяют людей, о сексуальности, нравственности и чудодейственных возможностях искусства. Это исследование неведомого и чарующего состояния, оторванного от обширного материка человеческого жизненного опыта, но глубинно присущего жизни как таковой. Обжигающе проницательная и глубоко человечная книга. Лэнг – талантливый биограф, мемуарист и критик. Бесстрашно исследуя истоки одиночества и его сложные, но плодотворные отношения с искусством, «Одинокий город» становится пронзительным высказыванием о нашем мире. Во время ее чтения мое сердце наполнилось болью, но и надеждой. Хелен Макдональд , автор книги «Я – значит ястреб» Прекрасная книга-мозаика. Ханья Янагихара, The New Yorker Один из лучших авторов новой волны non-fiction. . . неотразимый и оригинальный. Harper’s Bazaar

Keď sa Olivia Laing presťahovala do New Yorku, ocitla sa v priestore osamelosti, fascinujúcom a zahanbujúcom zároveň. Rozhodla sa preskúmať „mesto osamelosti“ prostredníctvom výtvarného umenia a prechádza sa dielami a životmi Edwarda Hoppera, Andyho Warhola, Davida Wojnarowicza či Henryho Dargera. Kniha poskytuje živý obraz toho, čo znamená byť sám, skúma príčiny a prejavy osamelosti, ako aj spôsoby, ako jej čeliť a vymaniť sa z nej. Kritici ju označujú za odvážnu a podmanivú, pričom je považovaná za provokáciu a útechu pre osamelých. Laingov štýl je obdivuhodný, pričom jej pozorovania pôsobia banálne, až kým nezatnú do živého. Kniha je výnimočným spojením osobného príbehu s psychologickým a umeleckým skúmaním, pričom čitateľ si uvedomuje vlastnú osamelosť, ale zároveň sa cíti menej sám. Laing je uznávanou spisovateľkou a novinárkou, autorkou troch kníh literatúry faktu a jedného románu. Mesto osamelosti, nominované na cenu Gordona Burna, je považované za hybrid memoárov, dejín a kultúrnej kritiky, ktorý poskytuje nový pohľad na ťažkú tému osamelosti.

Olivia Laing untersucht in ihrem Werk die politischen Dimensionen des Körpers und dessen Rolle in Protestbewegungen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Sie beleuchtet Themen wie sexuelle Befreiung, Feminismus und globale Gesundheitskrisen und zieht Verbindungen zu bedeutenden Persönlichkeiten und eigenen Erfahrungen.