James Wood has been called our best young critic. This is not true, he is our best critic, he thinks with a sublime ferocity -Cynthia Ozick.
James Wood has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 2007. In 2009, he won the National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism. He was the chief literary critic at the Guardian from 1992 to 1995, and a book critic at the New Republic from 1995 to 2007. He has published a number of books with Cape, including How Fiction Works, which has been translated into thirteen languages.
Wood is not just a keen critic, our best, but a superb writer
*Financial Times*
A close reader of genius... Illuminating and exciting and
compelling... one never doubts the soundness of his judgements...
There is wonderful writing throughout this collection, by turns
luscious and muscular, committed and disdaining, passionate and
minutely considered
*Irish Times*
He is one of literature's true lovers, and his deeply felt,
contentious essays are thrilling in their reach and moral
seriousness
*Susan Sontag*
Magnificent... Like all good critics, he is a story-teller of the
art of reading, recreating the experience on the page for us
*Francis Spufford*
We have very few critics who can vie with Jarrell and Toynbee, who
can remind us that talking about literature is a part of what
literature is about, and talking about it with passion, precision,
and out of a rich store of reading is a rare and precious gift: it
is good for all of us that James Wood has it and we have James
Wood
*Times Literary Supplement*
Ask a Question About this Product More... |