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Zest

Essays on the Art of Living
  • ISBN-13: 9781800172050
  • Publisher: CARCANET PRESS
    Imprint: CARCANET PRESS
  • By Iain Bamforth
  • Price: AUD $49.99
  • Stock: 15 in stock
  • Availability: Order will be despatched as soon as possible.
  • Local release date: 12/10/2022
  • Format: Paperback (216.00mm X 135.00mm) 260 pages Weight: 380g
  • Categories: Poetry by individual poets [DCF]
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Originally subtitled On the Art of Living in the Merciless Order of Modernity, the writing in Zest adds up to a pattern book for intellectual and emotional survival in this fractious age. The book opens with Hieronymus Bosch in the Garden of Eden, where we share with him the first fruit. It takes us by way of writers, artists, philosophers, travellers, photographers, flavours and musicians into the world of Zest - how we can find it and what its discovery does to us. Bamforths sensuous, richly nuanced essays affect us as stories do, each one creating a world in which its arguments live and breathe, laugh and explore. He has written extensively about medicine. He is, more than just a widely-travelled European, a world traveller: his work as a hospital doctor and general practitioner has taken him to every corner of the planet, working as a public health consultant in various developing countries, especially in Asia. Zest itself occurs in the South of France, with Tobias Smollett, as picaresque a writer and character as Dr Bamforth himself. He is provoking, digressive and sometimes droll. His diverse interests, from Bible studies to communication theory, from photography to the impact of globalisation, and his shifts from botanising in the Garden of Eden to "botanising on the asphalt" (Walter Benjamin) always keep in sight the philosophical issue that provides Zests subtitle-the art of living.

Iain Bamforth was born in 1959 and grew up in Glasgow. He has worked as a hospital doctor in the American Hospital of Paris and the Australian outback, as urban and rural general practitioner, and more recently on community health projects in south-east Asia. He has also been a scientific translator and editor, literary journalist and lecturer in comparative literature. He has published five collections of poetry, a history of modern medicine as told through literature (The Body in the Library, Verso), and a collection of essays on European intellectual history (The Good European, Carcanet).

* A sensuous, richly nuanced collection of essays for intellectual and emotional survival in this fractious age * Takes us by way of writers, artists, philosophers, travellers, and photographers into the world of Zest – how we can find it and what its discovery does to us * Explores the impact of science on literature; globalisation and travel; work, leisure and the notion of the “good life” * Bamforth has received an Eric Gregory Award, a Scottish Arts Council Book Award, and has written for the TLS, LRB, Quadrant, and the New York Times Book Review

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