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Cultural Amnesia - Abridged by Clive James
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Cultural Amnesia - Abridged

Notes in the Margin of My Time

$13.14

Narrator Clive James

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Length 6 hours 17 minutes
Language English
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Abridged for audio. Read by the author, Clive James.

With fascinating essays on towering figures from Anna Akhmatova to Stefan Zweig, via Charles de Gaulle, Hitler, Thomas Mann and Wittgenstein, Cultural Amnesia is one of the crowning achievements in Clive James's illustrious career as a critic.

'One stupendous starburst of wild brilliance' โ€“ Simon Schama, historian and author of The Power of Art


A comprehensive survey of modern culture, Cultural Amnesia is Clive James' unique take on the places and the faces that shaped the twentieth-century. From Anna Akhmatova to Stefan Zweig, via Charles de Gaulle, Hitler, Thomas Mann and Wittgenstein, this varied and unfailingly absorbing book is both story and history, both public memoir and personal record โ€“ and provides an essential field-guide to the vast movements of taste, intellect, politics and delusion that helped to prepare the times we live in now.

'Aphoristic and acutely provocative: a crash course in civilization' โ€“ J. M. Coetzee, author of Disgrace

Clive James was the author of more than forty books. As well as essays, he published collections of literary and television criticism, travel writing, verse and novels, plus five volumes of autobiography, Unreliable Memoirs, Falling Towards England, May Week Was In June, North Face of Soho and The Blaze of Obscurity. As a television performer he appeared regularly for both the BBC and ITV, most notably as writer and presenter of the Postcard series of travel documentaries. He published several poetry collections, including the Sunday Times bestseller Sentenced to Life, and a translation of Danteโ€™s The Divine Comedy, which was also a Sunday Times bestseller. In 1992 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia and in 2003 he was awarded the Philip Hodgins memorial medal for literature. He holds honorary doctorates from Sydney University and the University of East Anglia. In 2012 he was appointed CBE and in 2013, an Officer of the Order of Australia. He died in 2019.

Clive James was the author of more than forty books. As well as essays, he published collections of literary and television criticism, travel writing, verse and novels, plus five volumes of autobiography, Unreliable Memoirs, Falling Towards England, May Week Was In June, North Face of Soho and The Blaze of Obscurity. As a television performer he appeared regularly for both the BBC and ITV, most notably as writer and presenter of the Postcard series of travel documentaries. He published several poetry collections, including the Sunday Times bestseller Sentenced to Life, and a translation of Danteโ€™s The Divine Comedy, which was also a Sunday Times bestseller. In 1992 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia and in 2003 he was awarded the Philip Hodgins memorial medal for literature. He holds honorary doctorates from Sydney University and the University of East Anglia. In 2012 he was appointed CBE and in 2013, an Officer of the Order of Australia. He died in 2019.

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Reviews

One stupendous starburst of wild brilliance Aphoristic and acutely provocative: a crash course in civilization Over the past forty years James has been scribbling notes in the margins of the books he has read . . . and this is the result. Clever, contentious and funny Witty, insightful and unashamedly erudite, the book is a superb miscellany of 20th-century cultural and political subjects This is a beautiful book. James proves himself not only to be in possession of a towering intellect, but a singular ability to communicate his passions An eclectic journey through the 20th century, as Clive James explores the careers of luminaries such as Charles de Gaulle and Charlie Chaplin [A] fabulously gifted, enviably well-read, generously inclusive, and always commonsensical writer Clive James is one of the most ingeniously stimulating literary critics. Cultural Amnesia, with its encyclopedic length and organization and the intense jostle of its ideas, is to be dipped into over weeks and months. If the dipper occasionally brings up exasperation, it brings up astonished delight far more often; and, best of all, exasperated astonished delight Expand reviews
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