In 1600 Adams was the first English man to step on Japanese shores - one of only nine survivors of a Dutch trading expedition. He became the shogun's advisor and ship builder, and a samurai.... read more
The author and her brother spent a decade at sea; at sixteen she made it ashore in New Zealand, effectively abandoned by her parents. A startling and riveting memoir.
LB could turn straw into gold. Here she describes chancing across the writings of a rather obscure Greek philosopher, and the wonders and illuminations that followed. Transformative.
Dorothy Dean was one of the few African American women of the New York 60s underground scene. She starred in six of Andy Warhol's films. Patti Smith calls her 'small, black and brilliant,' i... read more
Gloriously funny memoir by a Minnesotan food writer about moving to an unpretentious village in the Languedoc with his wife and two aghast children. Hoffman has previously won the James Bear... read more
It is nearly thirty years since Aciman's superb memoir of his Alexandria childhood, Out of Egypt. Since Call Me By Your Name he has mutated from an academic scholar of Proust into a bestsell... read more
Memoir and reportage by the outstanding foreign correspondent (who has covered conflict in Ukraine, Mali, Syria, Kosovo, Bosnia, Rwanda, Israel/Palestine), and an anthology of poems that spe... read more
Who were 'The Flappers'? A generation of women who broke with social conventions; exotic, often despairing, and influential. By the author of the excellent Tales from the Colony Room: Soho's... read more
In the 1550s, a Venetian public servant produced three anonymous volumes of geographical data, some of it well known, some hitherto secret: Renaissance Wikileaks.
The autodidact cultural critic has written an exhilarating and evocative memoir of his youth, the unstable fortunes of his family, and the diverse artistic tribes of NY before the catastroph... read more