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At the Same Time

'These sixteen pieces brim over with vitality . . . every one of them opening up fresh lines of thought' John Gray, New Statesman 
 
At the Same Time contains sixteen illuminating essays by Susan Sontag with a preface by David Rieff. 
 
The sixteen essays represent the last pieces written by Susan Sontag in the years before her death in 2004. Reflecting on literature, photography and art, post 9/11 America and political activism, these essays encompass the themes that dominated Sontag's life and work, revealing why she remains one of the twentieth century's preeminent writers and thinkers. 
 
'One of America's greatest public intellectuals' Observer 
 
'Excellent and essential' Financial Times 
 
'Reads like a greatest-hits album - a little politics, something on photography, some lit. crit. - of Sontag's passions' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Sontag's clear thinking . . . shines like a spotlight in dark places' The Times

At the time [Sontag] died, she was America&rsquo;s best-known public intellectual. To my mind, she was also the most exemplary. Intellectually and imaginatively gifted to an extraordinary degree, she used her fearless intelligence to illuminate some of the deepest contradictions of contemporary life

Intense and insightful . . . some excellent and essential essays

Sontag&rsquo;s clear thinking . . . shines like a spotlight in dark places

A formidable mind . . . America&rsquo;s foremost intellectual . . . [Sontag&rsquo;s] willingness to shoulder the responsibility and complicity for acts that most Americans are only too eager to condemn is the sign of a spirit open to examining any idea except compromise

[A] powerful collection . . . Sontag's brilliance as a literary critic, her keen analytical skill and her genius for the searingly apt phrase are all fiercely displayed here

The sixteen essays represent the last pieces written by Susan Sontag in the years before her death in 2004. Reflecting on literature, photography and art, post-9/11 America and political activism, these essays encompass the themes that dominated Sontag’s life and work, revealing why she remains one of the twentieth-century’s preeminent writers and thinkers.

Collected Stories

Stories

'Magnificent... Her famous seriousness pervades throughout... What's striking is the astonishing scope, potential and possibility Sontag saw in short fiction' Financial Times 
 
The complete collected short stories of Susan Sontag, one of the most brilliant and influential writers of the twentieth century 
 
Susan Sontag is most often remembered as a brilliant essayist - inquisitive, analytical, fearlessly outspoken. Yet all throughout her life, she also wrote short stories: fictions which wrestled with those ideas and preoccupations she couldn't address in essay form. These short fictions are allegories, parables, autobiographical vignettes, each capturing an authentic fragment of life, dramatizing Sontag's private griefs and fears. 
 
Stories collects all of Sontag's short fiction for the first time. This astonishingly versatile collection showcases its peerless writer at the height of her powers. For any Sontag fan, it is an unmissable testament to her creative achievements. 
 
'Sontag is one of the most influential critics of her generation' New York Review of Books

If you are a bibliophile, you need this beautiful hardback in your life... These superb stories show the sheer versatility of one of this century's most inquisitive minds

Susan Sontag is most often remembered as a brilliant essayist - inquisitive, analytical, fearlessly outspoken. Yet all throughout her life, she also wrote short stories: fictions which wrestled with those ideas and preoccupations she couldn't address in essay form. These short fictions are allegories, parables, autobiographical vignettes, each capturing an authentic fragment of life, dramatizing Sontag's private griefs and fears. 
 
Stories collects all of Sontag's short fiction for the first time. This astonishingly versatile collection showcases its peerless writer at the height of her powers. For any Sontag fan, it is an unmissable testament to her creative achievements.

Early Diaries 1947-1963

Reborn

'In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could do to any person; I create myself' 
 
Intimate, vulnerable and unsparing, Reborn bears witness to the evolution of Susan Sontag. 
 
With entries dating from 1947-1963, the first instalment from Susan Sontag's diaries charts her ascension from early adolescence to her early thirties. Unabashed, though thoroughly self-reflective, Sontag's diaries reveal the inner workings of her mind, her insecurities and her passions. This compelling account of the evolution of America's greatest post-war intellectual allows us to behold the moral and political awakening of the artist and critic. 
 
'An exceptionally vivid, and often moving, account of a young woman's painful journey towards acceptance of her own nature' Sunday Telegraph 
 
'Moving on several levels . . . thrilling . . . fascinating . . . often reads like a brilliant postmodern bildungsroman' New York Magazine 
 
'One can feel Sontag's mind beginning to ripen and bloom, and the full force of the intellectual originality that would be her hallmark emerging' Guardian

Fascinating. One can feel Sontag's mind beginning to ripen and bloom, and the full force of the intellectual originality that would be her hallmark emerging

Inspirational. Sontag shows us not just the importance, but the exhilaration of being earnest

A fascinating document of her apprenticeship, charting her earnest quest for education, identity, and voice. Reborn is overwhelmingly a record of an inner landscape.

With entries dating from 1947-1963, the first instalment from Susan Sontag's diaries charts her ascension from early adolescence to her early thirties. Unabashed, though thoroughly self-reflective, Sontag's diaries reveal the inner workings of her mind, her insecurities and her passions. This compelling account of the evolution of America's greatest post-war intellectual allows us to behold the moral and political awakening of the artist and critic.

Diaries 1964-1980

As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh

Regarding the Pain of Others

Regarding the Pain of Others is Susan Sontag's searing analysis of our numbed response to images of horror. 
 
'A coruscating sermon on how we picture suffering' The New York Times 
 
What is the purpose of images of pain and suffering? Can there be any real justification for the creation, and consumption, of such images? 
 
In this seminal volume, Susan Sontag examines the uses and meanings of images, from inspiring dissent to fostering violence to creating apathy. And through this lens she considers the nature of war, the limits of sympathy, and the obligations of conscience. 
 
'A far-reaching set of ruminations [...] on what it means to be alive and alert in the twenty-first century' Independent 
 
'Sontag is on top form: devastating' Los Angeles Times 
 
'Simple, elegant, fiercely persuasive' Metro

From Goya's Disasters of War to news footage and photographs of the conflicts in Vietnam, Rwanda and Bosnia, pictures have been charged with inspiring dissent, fostering violence or instilling apathy in us, the viewer. Regarding the Pain of Others will alter our thinking not only about the uses and meanings of images, but about the nature of war, the limits of sympathy, and the obligations of conscience.

On Photography

'The most original and illuminating study of the subject' New Yorker 
 
Photographs are everywhere. From high art to family albums to legal evidence, they capture and document the world around us. And whether we use them to expose, reveal or remember, they hold an enduring power. 
 
In this essential and revelatory volume, Susan Sontag confronts important questions surrounding the power dynamics between photographer and subject, the blurred boundary between lived events and recreated images, and the desires that lead us to record our lives. 
 
'Complex and contradictory... one of America's greatest public intellectuals' Observer 
 
'Susan Sontag offers enough food for thought to satisfy the most intellectual of appetites' The Times 
 
'A brilliant analysis of the profound changes photographic images have had in our way of looking at the world, and at ourselves, over the years' Washington Post

First published in 1973, this is a study of the force of photographic images which are continually inserted between experience and reality. Sontag develops further the concept of 'transparency'. When anything can be photographed and photography has destroyed the boundaries and definitions of art, a viewer can approach a photograph freely with no expectations of discovering what it means. This collection of six lucid and invigorating essays, the most famous being "In Plato's Cave," make up a deep exploration of how the image has affected society.

Susan Sontag

It's her clarity that can make you gasp, combined with her confidence . . . what shines through this book is the extraordinary suppleness of her mind . . . She articulated, in punchy, matter-of-fact prose, thoughts that for most of us would stay at best half-formed

On Women offers tantalizing glimmers and hints [of] what Susan Sontag would make of our current political moment . . . Sontag's stylish, idiosyncratic approach to the feminist debates and preoccupations of her era can be distilled pretty well into tangible guidance for ours

On Women demonstrates a powerful mind and equally forceful personality . . . like turning back the clock to the days of Sontag's prime

Sontag's language is urgent . . . and boldly provocative. Those previously unsure where she stood on the politics of womanhood, or found her opaque on the topic, can be in no doubt after this

A new collection of feminist essays from the influential writer, activist and critic, Susan Sontag

For the most part written in the 1970s during the height of second-wave feminism, Sontag's essays are strikingly relevant to our contemporary conversations. At times powerfully in sync and at others powerfully at odds with them, they are always characteristically original in their examinations of the 'biological division of labour', the double-standard for ageing and the dynamics of women's powerlessness and women's power. 
 
As Merve Emre writes in her introduction, 'They offer us the spectacle of a ferocious intellect setting itself to the task at hand: to articulate the politics and aesthetics of being a woman in the United States, the Americas and the world.'

On Women

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Praise for On Women

It's her clarity that can make you gasp, combined with her confidence . . . what shines through this book is the extraordinary suppleness of her mind . . . She articulated, in punchy, matter-of-fact prose, thoughts ...

On Women offers tantalizing glimmers and hints [of] what Susan Sontag would make of our current political moment . . . Sontag's stylish, idiosyncratic approach to the feminist debates and preoccupations of he ...

On Women demonstrates a powerful mind and equally forceful personality . . . like turning back the clock to the days of Sontag's prime

It's her clarity that can make you gasp, combined with her confidence . . . what shines through this book is the extraordinary suppleness of her mind . . . She articulated, in punchy, matter-of-fact prose, thoughts ...

On Women offers tantalizing glimmers and hints [of] what Susan Sontag would make of our current political moment . . . Sontag's stylish, idiosyncratic approach to the feminist debates and preoccupations of he ...

On Women demonstrates a powerful mind and equally forceful personality . . . like turning back the clock to the days of Sontag's prime

It's her clarity that can make you gasp, combined with her confidence . . . what shines through this book is the extraordinary suppleness of her mind . . . She articulated, in punchy, matter-of-fact prose, thoughts ...

On Women offers tantalizing glimmers and hints [of] what Susan Sontag would make of our current political moment . . . Sontag's stylish, idiosyncratic approach to the feminist debates and preoccupations of he ...

On Women demonstrates a powerful mind and equally forceful personality . . . like turning back the clock to the days of Sontag's prime

Books by Susan Sontag

Articles featuring Susan Sontag

‘No need to sparkle’: why we should all take Virginia Woolf’s advice in 2021

Obama’s secret writing weapon: what is it about the yellow legal pad?

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