Susan Sontag

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 into their shared history that spanned nearly a quarter-century. From sources such as their eponymous film broadcast, rare personal letters and archival recordings, the composite fragments build a portrait of a relationship that was often lively and challenging, sometimes trivial and always affectionate. Berger and Sontag's voices echo throughout these pages, riffing off the other as they grapple with their respective concerns. Above all, their conversations reveal a deep reciprocal admiration and an exchange of ideas about storytelling, the self and society that informed their own work.

„A szépség – a nők feladata társadalmunkban – valójában a leigázásuk színtere.” A 2004-ben elhunyt Susan Sontag a múlt század egyik legeredetibb és legizgalmasabb gondolkodója volt. Esszékötetei (mint A fényképezésről vagy A betegség mint metafora) immár klasszikusnak számítanak. Ebben a kötetben a nőkkel, a női problémákkal vagy egyszóval a feminizmussal kapcsolatos változatos írásai szerepelnek. Szó esik az öregedésről mint ami a nőknek különleges kihívásokkal és megaláztatásokkal járó folyamat; az „igazi” női emancipáció lehetőségeiről; a szépségről, melynek bálványozása megerősíti a nők függő helyzetét; egy hosszú esszé pedig a Leni Riefenstahlról, a náci rezsim híres filmrendezőjéről kialakult mítosz bravúros dekonstruálása. Sontag mindig elgondolkodtató, gyakran provokatív; s amikor a nők helyzetéről ír, hol harcos feministának, hol a lelki mélységek elragadó feltárójának mutatkozik.

On Women brings together Susan Sontag's most fearless and incisive writing on women, a crucial aspect of her work that has not until now received the attention it deserves Written during the height of second-wave feminism, Sontag's essays remain strikingly relevant to our contemporary conversations. At times powerfully in sync and at others powerfully at odds with them, they are always characteristically original in their examinations of the 'biological division of labour', the double-standard for ageing and the dynamics of women's power and powerlessness. As Merve Emre writes in her introduction, On Women offers us 'the spectacle of a ferocious intellect setting itself to the task at hand: to articulate the politics and aesthetics of being a woman in the United States, the Americas and the world.'

"A kamera maga a gyógyír és a kór, egyszerre eszköze a valóság birtokbavételének és elsorvasztásának." Milyen hatással lehet a valósághoz fűződő viszonyunkra az, hogy a fényképezőgépünkkel szabadon leképezhetjük (lemásolhatjuk, dokumentálhatjuk, módosíthatjuk vagy épp helyettesíthetjük) a minket övező világot? Susan Sontag ebben a hat esszét (és egy idézetgyűjteményt) tartalmazó kötetben a rá jellemző utánozhatatlan szépirodalmi stílussal és filozófiai megalapzottsággal vizsgálja a fotográfia történetét, és vet számot a fotózás szerteágazó, megannyi kérdést és problémát felvető kulturális jelenségével. A fényképezésről 1977-es megjelenése óta semmit sem vesztett gondolatébresztő erejéből - a közösségi médiák korában, melyet áthat a vizuális (ön)reprezentálás kollektív vágya, aktuálisabb, mint valaha.

The complete short stories of Susan Sontag, one of the most brilliant & influential writers of the twentieth century - collected together for the first time Susan Sontag is most often remembered as a brilliant essayist - inquisitive, analytical, fearlessly outspoken. Yet all throughout her life, she also wrote short stories: fictions which wrestled with those ideas and preoccupations she couldn't address in essay form. These short fictions are allegories, parables, autobiographical vignettes, each capturing an authentic fragment of life, dramatizing Sontag's private griefs and fears. Stories collects all of Sontag's short fiction for the first time. This astonishingly versatile collection showcases its peerless writer at the height of her powers. For any Sontag fan, it is an unmissable testament to her creative achievements

The ultimate Camp statement: it's good because it's awful.' These two classic essays were the first works of criticism to break down the boundaries between 'high' and 'low' culture, and made Susan Sontag a literary sensation. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

Susan Sontag's On Photography is a seminal and groundbreaking work on the subject. Susan Sontag's groundbreaking critique of photography asks forceful questions about the moral and aesthetic issues surrounding this art form. Photographs are everywhere, and the 'insatiability of the photographing eye' has profoundly altered our relationship with the world. Photographs have the power to shock, idealize or seduce, they create a sense of nostalgia and act as a memorial, and they can be used as evidence against us or to identify us. In these six incisive essays, Sontag examines the ways in which we use these omnipresent images to manufacture a sense of reality and authority in our lives. "Sontag offers enough food for thought to satisfy the most intellectual of appetites". (The Times). "A brilliant analysis of the profound changes photographic images have made in our way of looking at the world, and at ourselves". (Washington Post). "The most original and illuminating study of the subject". (New Yorker). One of America's best-known and most admired writers, Susan Sontag was also a leading commentator on contemporary culture until her death in December 2004. Her books include four novels and numerous works of non-fiction, among them Regarding the Pain of Others, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, At the Same Time, Against Interpretation and Other Essays and Reborn: Early Diaries 1947-1963, all of which are published by Penguin. A further eight books, including the collections of essays Under the Sign of Saturn and Where the Stress Falls, and the novels The Volcano Lover and The Benefactor, are available from Penguin Modern Classics.

A historical romance, Sontag's book is based on the lives of Sir William Hamilton, his wife, Emma, and Lord Nelson in the final decades of the eighteenth century. Passionately examining the shape of Western civilization since the Age of Enlightenment, Sontag's novel is an exquisitely detailed picture of revolution, the fate of nature, art and love.

The story of In America is inspired by the emigration to America in 1876 of Helena Modrzejewska, Poland's most celebrated actress, accompanied by her husband, Count Karol Chlapowski, her fifteen-year-old son, Rudolf, the young journalist and future author of Quo Vadis, Henryk Sienkiewicz, and a few friends; their brief sojourn in Anaheim, California; and Modrzejewska's subsequent triumphant career on the American stage under the name Helena Modjeska.

A series of provocative discussions on everything from individual authors to contemporary religious thinking, Against Interpretation and Other Essays is the definitive collection of Susan Sontag's best known and important works published in Penguin Modern Classics. Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag's first collection of essays and made her name as one of the most incisive thinkers of our time. Sontag was among the first critics to write about the intersection between 'high' and 'low' art forms, and to give them equal value as valid topics, shown here in her epoch-making pieces 'Notes on Camp' and 'Against Interpretation'. Here too are impassioned discussions of Sartre, Camus, Simone Weil, Godard, Beckett, Lévi-Strauss, science-fiction movies, psychoanalysis and contemporary religious thought. Originally published in 1966, this collection has never gone out of print and has been a major influence on generations of readers, and the field of cultural criticism, ever since. Susan Sontag (1933-2004) was born in Manhattan and studied at the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Oxford. She is the author of four novels - The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover and In America, which won the 2000 US National Book Award for fiction - a collection of stories, several plays, and six books of essays, among them Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors. Her books are translated into thirty-two languages. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work, and in 2003 she received the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. If you enjoyed Against Interpretation and Other Essays, you might like Sontag's On Photography, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

At the Same Time contains sixteen illuminating essays by Susan Sontag. With a preface by David Rieff. The sixteen essays gathered here represent the last pieces written by Susan Sontag in the years before her ddath in 2004. Reflecting on literature, photography and art, post 9/11 America and political activism, these essays encompass the themes that dominated Sontag's life and work, revealing why she remains one of the twentieth century's preeminent writers and thinkers.

Regarding the Pain of Others is Susan Sontag's searing analysis of our numbed response to images of horror. What is the purpose of images of pain and suffering? Can there be any real justification for the creation, and consumption, of such images? In this seminal volume, Susan Sontag examines the uses and meanings of images, from inspiring dissent to fostering violence to creating apathy. And through this lens she considers the nature of war, the limits of sympathy, and the obligations of conscience.