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An exhilarating collection of essays examining consciousness, selfhood and free will
A collection of biographies about against-the-odds achievements
An apprenticeship with the bad-boy of 1990s fiction makes for a moving lament for a vanished age
The life story of an intellectual who lived in Japan in his youth and dabbled in dance and theatre
A taut memoir beautifully exposes how dreams and lives are constrained
A biography of the golfer seeks to decode ‘the most mysterious athlete of his time’
A fine double portrait reveals the true achievements of Lord Byron’s wife and daughter
A long-awaited biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski examines the foreign-policy adviser’s complex legacy
The Suede singer eschews the ‘coke and gold discs’ approach of most pop memoirists
The biographer on personal tragedy, literary success — and tackling the subject of her own life
A personal inquiry into freedom and modern womanhood grapples with a complex legacy
Why are we so drawn to accounts of the interplay between life and literature?
A vivid family portrait brings a century of Ethiopian history to life
The tall tales of an ageing gonzo hero take us back to the counter-culture
A confessional memoir lays out a mythology of modern courtship
A memoir by a former US Border Patrol agent is full of insights into the migrant experience
A journey from Idaho isolation is powerfully described in this memoir of learning
Wendy Mitchell’s account of life with dementia is much more than the first book of its kind
A vivid account of one eastern European family’s turbulent 20th century
Two cultures illuminate one another in this true story of a US-raised entrepreneur caught up in Yemen’s civil war
A memoir by the author of ‘The Joy Luck Club’ dwells lightly on literary success
This fluid amalgam of memoir and journalism is a very readable challenge to American exceptionalism
This rediscovered memoir by a Jewish bookseller is a vital eyewitness account of Vichy France
A new biography presents the creator of ‘Frankenstein’ as a writer of moral seriousness as well as vivid Gothic imagination
A sympathetic biography of Charles I invites us to reconsider a much maligned monarch