Written Lives

Short, capricious and irreverent portraits illuminate the lives of twenty-six great writers from Joyce to Wilde

In these short, capricious and irreverent portraits of twenty-six great writers, from Joyce to Nabokov, Sterne to Wilde, Javier Marias throws unexpected, and very human, light on authors too often enshrined in the halo of artistic sainthood. Revealing that Conrad actually hated sailing and Emily Bronte was so tough she was known as ‘The Major’, among many other stories of eccentricity, drunkenness and even murder, this joyful book illuminates writers’ lives in a new way.