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A Writer of Our Time

The Life and Work of John Berger

Joshua Sperling author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Verso Books

Published:20th Nov '18

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A Writer of Our Time cover

The first intellectual biography of the life and work of John Berger

John Berger was one of the most influential thinkers and writers of postwar Europe. As a novelist, he won the Booker Prize in 1972, donating half his prize money to the Black Panthers; as a TV presenter he changed the way we looked at art in Ways of Seeing; as a storyteller and political activist he defended the rights and dignity of workers, migrants and the oppressed around the world. In 1953 he wrote: "Far from dragging politics into art, art has dragged me into politics." He remained a revolutionary up to his death in January, 2017.

In A Writer of Our Time, Joshua Sperling places Berger's life and works within the historical narrative of postwar Britain and beyond. The book also explores, through the work, the larger questions that vexed a generation: the purpose of art, the nature of creative freedom, the meaning of commitment. Drawing on extensive interviews, close readings and a wealth of archival sources only recently made available, the book brings the many different faces of John Berger together and shows him as one of the most vital, and brilliant, thinkers and storytellers of our time.

A welcome intervention that does justice to the legacy of Berger's thought and work which has been criminally underappreciated in Britain. * Morning Star *
Berger's talent for 'seeing all sides' of a thing, his incredible floating perspective, would have been worth less had he not used it to choose the right side. -- Sarah Nicole Prickett * Bookforum *

ISBN: 9781786637420

Dimensions: 235mm x 156mm x 29mm

Weight: 608g

304 pages