Author of the Month: John Berger
Selected by the Bookshop
To coincide with the centenary of his birth, our author of the month for November is the artist, novelist and essayist John Berger. Berger’s first novel, A Painter of Our Time, was published in 1958, but it was the BBC documentary series Ways of Seeing, directed by Mike Dibb in 1972 that brought him into wider public notice. The accompanying text quickly established itself as an essential introduction to visual culture. His writings on many subjects bear witness both to his Marxist world view and his deep compassion for the oppressed and disadvantaged. As Arundhati Roy writes, ‘John Berger teaches us how to think, how to feel, how to stare at things till we see what we thought wasn't there. But above all he teaches us how to love in the face of adversity. He is a master.’
From the publisher:
In 1966 John Berger spent three months in the Forest of Dean shadowing an English country GP, John Sassall. Sassall is a fortunate man - his work occupies and fulfils him, he lives amongst the patients he treats, the line between his life…
From the publisher:
"Why does the Western world look to migrant laborers to perform the most menial tasks? What compels people to leave their homes and accept this humiliating situation? In A Seventh Man, John Berger and Jean Mohr come to grips with what it is…
From the publisher:
The centenary edition, with a newly commissioned introduction by Simon McBurney. ‘Those who read or listen to our stories see everything as though through a lens. This lens is the secret of narration, and it is ground anew in every…
From the publisher:
A powerful meditation on political resistance and the global search for justiceFrom the ‘ War on Terror’ to resistance in Ramallah and traumatic dislocation in the Middle East, Berger explores the uses of art as an instrument of…
From the publisher:
An illuminating new life of the peerless thinker, artist and author of Ways of SeeingTom Overton got to know John Berger around 2010, after he gave his archive to the British Library: a kind of homecoming to the city of his birth, after a…
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John Berger, one of the world's most celebrated storytellers and writers on art, takes us through centuries of drawing and painting, revealing his lifelong fascination with a diverse cast of artists. In penetrating and singular prose,…
From the publisher:
A mother and father, estranged for years, are travelling across Europe to their daughter's wedding. Vibrant, beautiful Ninon has fallen in love with the young Italian Gino. She is twenty-three years old - and she is dying of AIDS. As their…
From the publisher:
John Berger was one of the most influential thinkers and writers of postwar Europe. As a novelist, he won the Booker Prize in 1972, donating half his prize money to the Black Panthers; as a TV presenter he changed the way we looked at art…
From the publisher:
In Permanent Red, John Berger argues that the contemporary artist should strive for a realism that aims for hope, to transform the world. Surveying the work of historical artists as well as that of near contemporaries such as Picasso, Leger…
From the publisher:
A new edition to celebrate John Berger’s centenary, selected and introduced by Teju Cole. Polemical, reflective, radically original, Berger's wide-ranging essays emphasise the continuities that underpinned more than 40 years of…
From the publisher:
'Swimming Pool' features a selection of texts from across the range of John Berger's writings on the theme of swimming. The texts are accompanied by drawings made by Leon Kossoff over a long period of time observing the activity at his…
From the publisher:
ona Heath relates the importance that John Berger's work and friendship had on her working life as a GP. It includes extracts from letters that span 20 years of her correspondence with John Berger.In this book, Iona Heath writes about…
From the publisher:
In this collection of essays on the work of, and conversations with, John Berger, thirty-seven of his friends, artistic collaborators and followers come together to form the first truly international and cross-cultural celebration of his…
From the publisher:
Seven poems & a sextet of afterwords ... Simon McBurney Tom Overton Emily Foister Mike Dibb David…
From the publisher:
Beginning each essay with an image, Keeping a Rendezvous examines the nature of the artistic encounter. Berger delves into questions of political struggle, the utility of hope, our relationship to images, and the role of art in our lives.…
From the publisher:
Exiled in London, the Hungarian artist Janos Lavin disappears one day, into thin air. His journal offers his friend John the only clues to where he has gone, and why. John Berger's first novel is a passionate exploration of the artistic…
From the publisher:
In 2009 writer John Berger visited Le Corbusier’s pilgrimage chapel at Ronchamp in eastern France. His companions on the trip were Sr. Lucia Kuppens and Sr. Telchilde Hinckley, two Benedictine nuns from Connecticut, and artist John…
From the publisher:
Introduced by Benjamin MyersIn the centre of a 1960s hospital ward sits a curtained-off bed, guarded by a policeman. In it lies a murderer, hidden from view and likely to die before he can be hanged for his crime. In the closed, regimented…
From the publisher:
This is a collection of interwoven stories, this is a portrait of two worlds - a small Alpine village bound to the earth and by tradition, and the restless, future-driven culture that will invade it - at their moment of collision. The…
From the publisher:
Despite their status as intellectual giants of the twentieth century, John Berger and Susan Sontag's artistic collaboration - and intense friendship - remains virtually unknown.Published for the first time, To Tell a Story offers a glimpse…
From the publisher:
A deeply moving exploration of the relationship between thinking and drawing, from the author of the groundbreaking Ways of SeeingThe seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza (a.k.a. Bento) spent the most intense years of his…
From the publisher:
Compelling and intimate, this collection of letters between the celebrated art critic and essayist John Berger and his son Yves, an artist, is a moving look at their musings on art, memory, life, death, and beyond. Composed of letters…
From the publisher:
'We live within a spectacle of empty clothes and unworn masks'In this series of remarkable pieces from across his career, John Berger celebrates and dissects the close links between art and society and the individual. Few writers give a…
From the publisher:
'Stimulating, intimate, heartfelt and beautifully designed, this is a book to be treasured' Geoff Dyer. Complementing their award-winning correspondence on the subject of colour, 'I Send You This Cadmium Red', published in 2000, 'Lapwing…
From the publisher:
In one of the most eloquent accounts of photography ever devised (originally published in 1982 and unavailable for many years), the writer John Berger and the photographer Jean Mohr set out to understand the fundamental nature of…
From the publisher:
Winer of a 1994 Time Out Theatre Award and TMA/Martini Award for Best UK Touring Production Lucie Cabrol is a wild, tiny woman born into a peasant family in France in 1900. Abandoned by her lover, Jean, and banished by her family, she…
From the publisher:
The Moment of Cubism is one of John Berger's most important collections of art criticism. Whether considering Vermeer in his studio, Poussin's poignant meditation on death, or the complexities of Rodin's sculpture, Berger draws together the…
From the publisher:
This is a collection of portraits of a shepherd, a farmer, a painter and blind man, a sylph of Byzantine arrogance and a vagabond cyclist with primroses growing in her basket. The backgrounds range from Prague, Paris, Athens, Lahore and…
From the publisher:
In the mythic city of Troy, amidst the shanty-towns, factories, opulent hotels, fading heritages and steadfast dreams, the children and grandchildren of rural peasants pursue meagre livings as best they can. And two young lovers embark upon…
From the publisher:
This is the new edition of Booker prize winning author's classic third novel.
From the publisher:
Based on the BBC television series, John Berger's Ways of Seeing is a unique look at the way we view art, published as part of the Penguin on Design series in Penguin Modern Classics.'Seeing comes before words. The child looks and…
From the publisher:
John Berger's writings on photography are some of the most original of the twentieth century. This selection contains many groundbreaking essays and previously uncollected pieces written for exhibitions and catalogues in which Berger…
From the publisher:
'Language is a body, a living creature ... and this creature's home is the inarticulate as well as the articulate'. John Berger's work has revolutionized the way we understand visual language. In this new book he writes about language…
From the publisher:
John Berger explores the life and work of Ernst Neizvestny, who, after clashing with Khrushchev, was excluded from the ranks of officially approved Soviet artists. Abandoned to obscurity, Neizvestny laboured to realize a monumental and very…
From the publisher:
Landscapes showcases the development and practice of John Berger's unique way of seeing. Here he surveys the aesthetic landscapes that have informed, challenged and nourished his understanding of the world.Berger pays homage to the writers…
From the publisher:
John Berger broke new ground with his penetrating writings on life, art and how we see the world around us. Here he explores how the ancient relationship between man and nature has been broken in the modern consumer age, with the animals…
From the publisher:
Booker wining novelist, playwright, essayist, poet and critic - even admirers rarely know John Berger in all his literary incarnations. This collection of essays will, for the first time, take a definitive look at his extraordinary career. …
From the publisher:
John Berger writes: 'The pocket in question is a small pocket of resistance. A pocket is formed when two or more people come together in agreement. The resistance is against the inhumanity of the new world economic order. The people coming…
From the publisher:
As a novelist, essayist, and cultural historian, John Berger is a writer of dazzling eloquence and arresting insight whose work amounts to a subtle, powerful critique of the canons of our civilization. In About Looking he explores our role…
From the publisher:
Edited by Tom Overton and Matthew HarleThe Underground Sea is a succinct, urgent collection of writing from John Berger's archive. It brings together for the first time his work on mineworkers and the miners' strikes and has been edited as…
From the publisher:
The centenary edition, with a newly commissioned introduction by Jo Hamya.In this luminous novel about a modern Don Juan, Berger relates the story of G., a young man forging an energetic sexual career in Europe during the early years of the…
From the publisher:
This title offers a furious homage to the homeless and a lyrical meditation on language and experience. You will be led to a place you haven't been, from where few stories come. You will be led by King, a dog (or is he?) to a wasteland…
From the publisher:
'Cataract from Greek kataraktes, meaning waterfall or portcullis, an obstruction that descends from above.' Notes and reflections by one of our great soothsayers of seeing, John Berger, on the minor miracle of cataract surgery. With…
From the publisher:
Novelist, draughtsman, film-maker, essayist and critic – John Berger is one of the major European intellectuals of our time. For sixty years he has been challenging the way we see the world and how we think about it, in books…
From the publisher:
Goya's Last Portrait presents the artist struggling to comprehend the relationship between his life and his work. Having painted humanity at its most violent and depraved amid the horrors of war, and also depicted the vibrancy of…
From the publisher:
The centenary edition, with a newly commissioned introduction by Anne Michaels.No one appreciates the detail of being alive more than the dead. In Lisbon, a man encounters his mother sitting on a park bench who laughs with the impudence of…
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