From A to X: A Story in Letters

by John Berger

Overview

In the dusty, ramshackle town of Suse lives A’ida. Her insurgent lover Xavier has been imprisoned. Resolute, sensuous and tender, A’ida’sletters to the man she loves tell of daily events in the town, and ofits motley collection of inhabitants whose lives flow through hers. Butthe area is under threat, and as a faceless power inexorably encroachesfrom outside, so the smallest details and acts of humanity—anintimate dance, a shared meal—assume for A’ida a life-affirmingsignificance, acts of resistance against the forces that mightotherwise extinguish them.

From A to X is a powerfulexploration of how humanity affirms itself in struggle: imagining acommunity which, besieged by economic and military imperialism, findstranscendent hope in the pain and fragility, vulnerability and sorrowof daily existence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781804299890
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	09/30/2025
Series:	The Essential John Berger
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.51(d)

About the Author

Storyteller, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, dramatist and critic, John Berger is one of the most internationally influential writers of the last fifty years. His many books include Ways of Seeing, the fiction trilogy Into Their Labours, Here Is Where We Meet, the Booker Prize-winning novel G, Hold Everything Dear, the Man Booker–longlisted From A to X, and A Seventh Man.

What People are Saying About This

Harold Pinter

From A to X is one of the most tender and poignant books I have read for many years. Its power rests in its economy of means, its account of enduring love surviving oppression. It demonstrates that however foul the forces oppressing us, love and the human spirit are indestructible.

Arundhati Roy

John Berger has given us an exquisite thing. This is a book of controlled rage sculpted with tools of tenderness and a searing political vision.

Editorial Reviews

"An exquisitely written and constructed novel."
—Sunday Times

"Berger has given us an exquisite thing. This is a book of controlled rage sculpted with tools of tenderness and a searing political vision"
—Arundhati Roy

"Berger has found a voice perfectly fitted to express an emotional sincerity quite rare in fiction at the moment."
—Ursula Le Guin

"One of the most tender and poignant books I have read for many years. Its power rests in its economy of means, its account of enduring love surviving oppression. It demonstrates that however foul the forces oppressing us, love and the human spirit are indestructible"
—Harold Pinter

"best understood, like all Berger's best work, as the record of one restless, committed, brilliant consciousness; a late showcase of a mind and sensibility of astonishing range and depth, which should be read as an epic poem or a lyrical essay as much as a novel"
—Melissa Benn, Independent

"This little book is magic... It is original and graceful, sustained by a quiet rage."
—Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

"Wrought with a miniaturist’s precision"
—New York Times

From the Publisher

By telling us the letters are not in chronological order, by proposing that their contents may be written in code and by indicating places where the writing is illegible, Berger the author invites us to interact with, to co-create, the text, guessing at the meanings of words and phrases, pondering what might have happened in the interval between letters, and imagining the reasons some were never posted. But "invites" is too mild a term, and "co-create" too academic. What he really does is charge the reader with the responsibility to join in…Berger's insistence on the unique, on the particular, prevents the novel from becoming a polemic. He rails against the blind sweep of oppression while keeping his gaze firmly rooted on the human: on human hands, which A'ida sketches over and over again in her letters, and on human longing, which suffuses this work with pain and beauty.
—The New York Times

Leah Hager Cohen

A novel comprised of a series of letters allegedly "recuperated" by Berger (Hold Everything Dear, 2007, etc.). The letters were supposedly found in Cell 73 of a recently abandoned old prison, a cell that had formerly housed Xavier, a political prisoner-though in civilian life a mechanic-incarcerated for "being a founder member of a terrorist network, and serving two life sentences." A'ida is deeply in love with Xavier, and her letters are filled with reflections on their relationship and on life in the town where she lives. They concentrate especially on her small circle of family and friends, and the people she meets in her profession as a pharmacist. Through her reminiscences we learn how she and Xavier met, and she relives through her letters the exhilaration of their early days together. We also witness how her relationship to Xavier deepens as she shares her observations and perceptions with her absent lover. Although Berger presents no correspondence from Xavier himself, we get the man's voice through philosophical musings written by Xavier on the back of A'ida's letters. While A'ida's letters tend toward the lovingly personal (though she also "digresses" into speculations about the mind/brain/body problem), Xavier's tend toward the political and put the nebulous actions for which he's been imprisoned into a larger framework of injustice and oppression. Alluding to Lorca, for example, he comments: "The day that hunger disappears the world will see a spiritual explosion such as humanity has never known." The tone of the novel ultimately becomes ever more ominous, and although planes begin to attack the village and some of A'ida's friends are killed, her love is strengthened throughher loss and suffering. Berger's writing comes off as equal parts somber and exalted.

Kirkus Reviews

The record of one restless, committed, brilliant consciousness; a late showcase of astonishing range and depth, which should be read as an epic poem or lyrical essay as much as a novel.— Melissa Benn

Independent

Wrought with a miniaturist's precision.

New York Times

An exquisitely written and constructed novel.

Sunday Times