FROM THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF WHAT I LOVED AND A WOMAN LOOKING AT MEN LOOKING AT WOMEN

'Lucid, absorbing and vigorous'
Independent

'Richly intelligent'
Financial Times

In these fascinating essays, Siri Hustvedt shows what lies behind her fiction: an abiding curiosity about who we are and how we got that way. Covering a wide range of subjects, from the nature of desire to false memories and the paintings of Goya, she draws on the insights provided by both the arts and sciences to deepen our understanding of what it means to be human - to live, think and look.

'As an essayist, Hustvedt is the best kind: superbly clear, intellectually challenging but always human'
Independent on Sunday

Her erudition, the sharp clarity of her thinking, the variety of her sources and the supple ways in which she weaves them into personal narrative, coupled with her fearlessness in the face of those aspects of the human condition which are of necessity ambiguous, infuse her work with a rare kind of quiet intellectual confidence...I'll be returning to these essays. * Melanie McGrath, Sunday Telegraph *
richly intelligent insights on every page * George Pendle, Financial Times *
Siri Hustvedt is best known as a novelist and her novels have received a deserved acclaim. But to my mind, she is even more to be admired as an essayist...there is something refreshingly straightforward about her style. It has the confidence born of complex but well digested thoughts and thus lacks the tendency to obfuscate that is the hallmark of the inferior thinker's style. * Salley Vikcers, Observer *
...she is an inspiring guide to territory where both the humanities and the sciences can throw light on the ways in which we construct meaning in our lives. * Nick Rennison, Sunday Times, Culture *
Hustvedt addresses a broad public without dumbing down her material... At once stimulating and warm-hearted, with sentences of drop-dead beauty and acuity on nearly every page. * Kirkus *
Hustvedt's deep interest in art, psychology, and neuroscience shape her brilliantly insightful novels as well as her virtuoso essays...Mystery, fact, intelligence, and enchantment flourish here. * Booklist *
exquisitely eloquent...You'll be by turns inspired, provoked, educated and enchanted. Her writing is scientifically precise and poetically elegant, and this intense compilation merits careful attention. It's a book you can return to time and time again. * Beatrice Hodgkin, Easy Living *
These essays offer thoughts on locating morality in the brain, the origins of desire and who we are when we sleep...I suggest you take this book to your favourite corner, turn off the phone and allow yourself to be reminded of the pure pleasure of using your mind. * Clare Longrigg, Psychologies *

Siri Hustvedt is the author of seven novels, five collections of essays, a poetry collection and a memoir. Her books have been listed for major prizes, including the Booker Prize, the Women's Prize and the PEN America Literary Award. She holds a PhD from Columbia University and has been awarded honorary PhDs from Johannes Gutenberg University, Stendhal University and the University of Oslo. She is a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and has written on art for the New York Times and the Daily Telegraph. Born in Minnesota, she lives in Brooklyn, New York.