Jenny Diski

This is the first book-length study of Jenny Diski’s work, bringing together her fiction and non-fiction to show how they form an open-ended project of self-representation. Through close readings and archival research, the book establishes Diski as a major contemporary author whose writing is both timely and highly distinctive. This is the first book-length study of Jenny Diski’s work and establishes her as a major contemporary writer. While Diski is variously known as a novelist, memoirist, essayist and travel writer, Ben Grant brings her work together to show how her fiction and non-fiction constitute a distinctive and open-ended project of self-representation. Taking a thematic approach, he examines Diski’s writing on self-portraiture, sex, illness, Jewishness, travel and animals to demonstrate how these concerns recur throughout her career. The book brings into focus her emphasis on emptiness and other forms of negativity, and situates her work in relation to the intellectual and historical contexts in which she wrote. It also shows how Diski reworks the genres she writes within, including the novel, the essay, the memoir and the travel narrative, and how her thinking takes place as much in narrative form as in argument. Drawing on archival research into Diski’s unpublished manuscripts as well as close readings of her published work, this study offers a bold and insightful account of a writer who is finely attuned to her historical moment and highly distinctive. This is the first book-length study of Jenny Diski’s work, offering a bold and original account of a writer whose fiction and non-fiction together form a sustained project. Ben Grant approaches Diski’s work thematically, examining recurring concerns in her writing on self-portraiture, sex, illness, Jewishness, travel and animals. The book demonstrates how Diski consistently reworks the genres she writes within, including the novel of ideas, memoir and travel writing, and establishes her as a major contemporary author whose thinking takes place as much in narrative form as in argument. Combining close readings with archival research, this study reveals a writer who is both singular and finely attuned to her historical moment.

Pagina's: 192, Hardcover, Manchester University Press