Browse: Love Letters to Bookshops Around the World

by Henry Hitchings (Editor), Various (Contribution by)

Overview

A celebration of the greatest kind of shop in the world, by an award-winning cast of writers including Ali Smith, Michael Dirda, Elif Shafak and Daniel Kehlmann.

A cabinet of curiosities, a time machine, a treasure trove - we love bookshops because they possess a unique kind of magic. In Browse, Henry Hitchings asks fifteen writers from around the world to reveal their favourite bookshops, each conjuring a specific time and place. These inquisitive, enchanting pieces are a collective celebration of bookshops - for anyone who has ever fallen under their spell. Contributors include Alaa Al Aswany, Stefano Benni, Michael Dirda, Daniel Kehlmann, Andrey Kurkov, Yiyun Li, Pankaj Mishra, Dorthe Nors, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Elif Shafak, Ian Sansom, Iain Sinclair, Ali Smith, Saša Stanišic, and Juan Gabriel Vásquez.

A dazzling collection of original essays about the bookshop by fifteen bestselling international authors.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781782272960
Publisher:	Steerforth Press
Publication date:	08/06/2019
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Henry Hitchings is an award-winning writer, reviewer and critic. He has written for the Guardian, London Review of Books, TLS, Financial Times and New Statesman, and is currently the Evening Standard's theatre critic. He is the author of several acclaimed books on language, literature and culture, including Dr Johnson's Dictionary, How to Really Talk About Books You Haven't Read and The Language Wars. In 2008, he was shortlisted for the title of Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, and in the same year his book The Secret Life of Words won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award.

Read an Excerpt

From time to time over the past few years I’ve done volunteer stints a few hours a week selling books at our local Amnesty International second-hand bookshop, Books for Amnesty. I live in a university town in the south of England and the book donations that come in, sometimes seven or eight in a plastic bag, sometimes a whole vanful, a house clearance, someone’s whole library,
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Excerpted from "Browse"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Henry Hitchings.
Excerpted by permission of Steerforth Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

"Lives up to its inviting title." - Times Literary Supplement

 "Very worthwhile but not too worthy, this is a timely call to arms." - Monocle 
'All these writers convey the magic of bookshops, while also making their vulnerability in recent times a recurrent theme.' - Guardian

'If you have ever lost yourself in a bookshop, felt the world fall away as you took a book off the shelves, this spell-binding collection will carry you off to shops near, far, lost and imagined.' - Mail on Sunday

'Everywhere bookshops are fast disappearing. Sixteen writers from around the world remind us why we should cherish them at all costs.' - Spectator

‘A lovely collection of touching and personal accounts of books and bookshops. Each author’s writing style is unique and transports you across the globe.’ — Cub Magazine

'In celebrating bookshops, Browse heralds humanity, with all its glorious eccentricities.' - Country Life

From the Publisher