The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief

Description

In a series of essays, the author examines the connection between literature and religious belief, in a wide group of writers. He re-appraises the writing of such figures as Thomas More, Jane Austen, Herman Melville, Anton Chekov, Thomas Mann, Nikolai Gogol, Gustave Flaubert and Virginia Woolf, reading them against the grain of received opinion, and relating them to questions of religious and philosophical belief. Writers such as Martin Amis, Thomas Pynchon and George Steiner are also discussed.

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 -- Adam Begley * 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 -- John Banville * 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 -- Evening Standard * 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 -- Gabriel Josipovici * Times Literary Supplement *