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Biography & Memoir

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The Journal: 1837-1861 By Henry David Thoreau Preface by John R. Stilgoe Edited by Damion Searls To understand Thoreau, one must read his journals—but until now they have never been available in a one-volume reader's edition that draws on the entirety of his 14-volume journal. Here at last is the essence of the great naturalist's thoughts, accumulated over the span of a life time Price: $17.21 (25% off)

The Way of the World By Nicolas Bouvier Translated from the French by Robyn Marsack Introduction by Patrick Leigh Fermor Drawings by Thierry Vernet In 1953 two young men in Geneva hopped in their rusty old Fiat determined to drive their way to the Khyber Pass. Many years later, Nicolas Bouvier reconstructed their travels through Turkey, Kurdistan, Afghanistan in this luminous travel memoir filled with the romance of unbound youth and adventure of self-discovery. Price: $12.71 (25% off)

The Snows of Yesteryear By Gregor von Rezzori Translated from the German by H. F. Broch De Rothermann Introduction by John Banville The author of Memoirs of an Anti-Semite tells his own story through portraits of the members of his childhood household. "An elegiac tribute to a receding past and a testament to the redemptive powers of memory–a family photography album, beautifully translated into words.—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Book Review Price: $11.96 (25% off)

Ringolevio By Emmett Grogan Introduction by Peter Coyote Grogan went from street punk to teenage junkie to countercultural icon in a few years. As the leader of the San Francisco Diggers in the '60s he set the tone—puckish, anarchic, radical—for a movement that was to alter the social fabric. He was also a great self-mythologizer. As Paul Krassner put it, "The leader of the Diggers doesn't exist, and his name is Emmett Grogan." Price: $13.46 (25% off)

Afloat By Guy de Maupassant Translated and with an introduction by Douglas Parmée Maupassant merges fact and fiction, dream and documentation in this seemingly simple logbook of a sailing cruise along the French Mediterranean coast. "[Afloat] has spontaneity, gaiety and freshness."—Daily Telegraph (UK) Price: $10.50 (25% off)

A Journey Round My Skull By Frigyes Karinthy Introduction by Oliver Sacks Translated from the Hungarian by Vernon Duckworth Barker The author was 48 when he was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor. His memoir follows him through the stages of symptom, diagnosis, and surgery. "Karinthy's book is, to my mind, a masterpiece. . . . A Journey Around My Skull, the first autobiographical description of a journey inside the brain, remains one of the very best."—Oliver Sacks, from the Introduction. Price: $13.46 (25% off)

Memoirs of Montparnasse By John Glassco Introduction by Louis Begley 1927. Finding college life "depressing...to a point where [he] could not go on" John "Buffy" Glassco decamped for Paris. Forty years later, he reconstructed this memoir à clef of his rollicking youth among the haute bohemians of the day, including Hemingway, Joyce, Djuna Barnes, and Kay Boyle. Price: $11.21 (25% off)

Pages from the Goncourt Journals By Edmond and Jules de Goncourt Foreword by Geoff Dyer Edited and Translated by Robert Baldick No evocation of Parisian life in the second half of the nineteenth century can match that found in the journals of the brothers Goncourt. Price: $12.71 (25% off)

Mani By Patrick Leigh Fermor Introduction by Michael Gorra Patrick Leigh Fermor carries the reader with him on his journeys amongst the peoples of the southernmost parts of Greece, exploring their history and time-honored lore. Price: $11.96 (25% off)

Roumeli By Patrick Leigh Fermor Introduction by Patricia Storace Travel writing's very own "cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond, and Graham Greene" explores northern Greece. Price: $11.96 (25% off)

Moura By Nina Berberova Translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz Richard D. Sylvester In this legendary biography, an unusual labor of love, Berberova paints a portrait of the ultimate survivor, a woman who made her life a triumph of fiction. Price: $18.71 (25% off)

Flaubert and Madame Bovary By Francis Steegmuller Introduction by Victor Brombert A work of scholarship, a profound contribution to literary criticism, Flaubert and Madame Bovary is a biographical study executed with all the precision and vision of a great novel. Price: $12.71 (25% off)

Hons and Rebels By Jessica Mitford Introduction by Christopher Hitchens In Hons and Rebels Jessica Mitford tells about her upbringing, which, she drily remarks, "even for England, in those far-off days of the middle twenties...was not exactly conventional...." Price: $11.96 (25% off)

The World I Live In By Helen Keller Edited and with an introduction by Roger Shattuck The World I Live In is a thought-provoking and deeply moving account of Helen Keller's keenest impressions and deepest feelings —as well as a rediscovered classic of American writing. Price: $10.50 (25% off)

My Century By Aleksander Wat Translated from the Polish by Richard Lourie Foreword by Czeslaw Milosz The great Polish poet Aleksander Wat's memoirs provide a powerful and moving account of life in Eastern Europe in the terrible twentieth century. Price: $12.71 (25% off)

Monsieur Proust By Céleste Albaret Translated from the French by Barbara Bray Foreword by André Aciman This lovely book is as close as we can come to meeting Proust in person. Price: $14.21 (25% off)

Black Sun By Geoffrey Wolff Black Sun is master biographer Geoffrey Wolff's picture of a brilliant and self-destructive man who sought to make his life into a work of art. Price: $14.96 (25% off)

Peking Story By David Kidd Preface by John Lanchester "Kidd's pieces are simple, graceful, comic, mournful miniatures of an ominous catastrophe, the unprecedently swift death of a uniquely ancient civilization." —John Updike Price: $10.50 (25% off)

Shelley: The Pursuit By Richard Holmes Here we have the real Shelley at last—radical agitator, atheist, and apostle of free love, as well as a brilliant and uncompromising poetic innovator. Price: $17.21 (25% off)

Twenty Days with Julian & Little Bunny by Papa By Nathaniel Hawthorne Introduction by Paul Auster This true-life story by a great American writer emerges from obscurity to shine a delightful light upon family life—then and now. Price: $12.71 (25% off)

Walter Benjamin By Gershom Scholem Translated from the German by Harry Zohn Introduction by Lee Siegel Gershom Scholem was a precocious teenager when he became Walter Benjamin's close friend. His account of that relationship is at once a tribute to his friend's genius and a lament for his personal and, as Scholem sees it, intellectual self-destructiveness. Price: $13.46 (25% off)

Prisoner of Love By Jean Genet Translated from the French by Barbara Bray Introduction by Ahdaf Soueif Genet's final masterpiece, written and rewritten on his deathbed, is a lyrical and philosophical voyage to the bloody intersection of oppression, terror, and desire at the heart of the contemporary world. Price: $14.96 (25% off)

A Sorrow Beyond Dreams By Peter Handke Translated from the German by Ralph Manheim Introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides "In A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, the author confronts his mother’s suicide in a compelling story that is like an explanation of a recurrent dream, a dream so vividly expressed it becomes our dream." —Chicago Sun Times Price: $9.71 (25% off)

Miserable Miracle By Henri Michaux Translated from the French by Louise Varese Introduction by Octavio Paz In Miserable Miracle, the great French poet and artist Henri Michaux, a confirmed teetotaler, tells of his life-transforming first encounters with a powerful hallucinogenic drug. Price: $10.46 (25% off)

Letters from Russia By Astolphe de Custine Introduction by Anka Muhlstein The Marquis de Custine's record of his trip to Russia in 1839 is a brilliantly perceptive, even prophetic, account of one of the world's most fascinating and troubled countries. Price: $18.71 (25% off)

An African in Greenland By Tete-Michel Kpomassie Translated from the French by James Kirkup Introduction by Al Alvarez "Kpomassie is indisputably a man of extraordinary charm; he is also sharp and perceptive and honest—unencumbered by a sense of obligation to his hosts that might have prevented him from telling us what they are really like."— Katherine Bouton, The Nation Price: $9.71 (25% off)

Renoir, My Father By Jean Renoir Translated from the French by Randolph and Dorothy Weaver Introduction by Robert L. Herbert In this delightful memoir, Jean Renoir, the director of such masterpieces of the cinema as Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game, tells the life story of his father, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the great Impressionist painter. Price: $14.21 (25% off)

The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian By Nirad C. Chaudhuri Introduction by Ian Jack The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian is an astonishing work of self-discovery and the revelation of a peerless and provocative sensibility. Price: $14.96 (25% off)

Reading and Writing By V.S. Naipaul In this essay of literary autobiography, V. S. Naipaul sifts through memories of his childhood in Trinidad, his university days in England, and his earliest attempts at writing, seeking the experiences of life and reading that shaped his imagination and his growth as a writer. Price: $13.56 (20% off)

The Quest for Corvo By A.J.A. Symons Introduction by A.S. Byatt The Quest for Corvo is a hilarious and heartbreaking portrait of the strange Frederick Rolfe, self-appointed Baron Corvo, an artist, writer, and frustrated aspirant to the priesthood with a bottomless talent for self-destruction. Price: $9.71 (25% off)

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