Autobibliography

(Paperback)

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Description

In my case, reading has always served a dual purpose. In a positive sense, it offers sustenance, enlightenment, the bliss of fascination. In a negative sense, it is a means of withdrawal, of inhabiting a reality quarantined from one that often comes across as painful, alarming or downright distasteful. In the former sense, reading is like food; in the latter, it is like drugs or alcohol.

In Autobibliography, Rob Doyle recounts a year spent rereading fifty-two books - from the Dhammapada and Marcus Aurelius, via The Tibetan Book of the Dead and La Rochefoucauld, to Robert Bolano and Svetlana Alexievich - as well as the memories they trigger and the reverberations they create. It is a record of a year in reading, and of a lifetime of books.

Provocative, intelligent and funny, it is a brilliant introduction to a personal canon by one of the most original and exciting writers around. It is a book about books, a book about reading, and a book about a writer. It is an autobibliography.

Reviews

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'Addictive self-portrait ... Doyle is sharp and funny as a critic, and morbidly candid about his own life ... we find a writer living and thinking his way to the frontiers of human society, rather than, as in so much contemporary writing, at its cosy core' - Nicholas Harris, The Spectator

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'Maddening and beguiling in equal measure ... a brilliant writer ... absolutely essential' - Steven Long, The Crack Magazine

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'A readers' book and a writer's dream ... Doyle's words are touching, filled with emotion, and brutally honest ... this bookworm knows his stuff and you should be consulting him regularly, or better yet just buy Autobibliography as your Christmas guidebook for your own 52 book challenge for 2022 ... Rob Doyle is the perfect bookshop companion; he will give you a completely concise review and share why he suggested the book in the first place, and it made me genuinely excited about the prospect' - Rebecca George, Nation.Cymru

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'I adore Rob Doyle. One of the great wordsmiths of our age' - Dan Stevens

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'Doyle's prose is virtuosic and exuberant ... strangely compelling' - Michael Delgado, inews

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Author Bio

Rob Doyle was born in Dublin and holds a first-class honors degree in philosophy and an MPhil in psychoanalysis from Trinity College Dublin. He is the author of the story collection This Is the Ritual and the novels Threshold and Here Are the Young Men, also a forthcoming film for which he cowrote the screenplay. He is the editor of the anthology The Other Irish Tradition, published by Dalkey Archive Press.