Lauren Elkin Books

'Destined to become a new classic' Chris Kraus A dazzlingly original reassessment of women's stories, bodies and art - and how we think about them. For decades, feminist artists have confronted the problem of how to tell the truth about their experiences as bodies. Queer bodies, sick bodies, racialised bodies, female bodies, what is their language, what are the materials we need to transcribe it? Exploring the ways in which feminist artists have taken up this challenge, Art Monsters is a landmark intervention in how we think about art and the body, calling attention to a radical heritage of feminist work that not only reacts against patriarchy but redefines its own aesthetic aims. Writing in the tradition of Susan Sontag, Hélène Cixous and Maggie Nelson, Lauren Elkin demonstrates her power as a cultural critic, weaving daring links between disparate artists and writers - from Julia Margaret Cameron's photography to Kara Walker's silhouettes, Vanessa Bell's portraits to Eva Hesse's rope sculptures, Carolee Schneemann's body art to Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's trilingual masterpiece DICTEE - and shows that their work offers a potent celebration of beauty and excess, sentiment and touch, the personal and the political.

'The Susan Sontag of her generation' Deborah Levy The story of two couples who live in the same apartment in north-east Paris almost fifty years apart. In 2019, Anna, a psychoanalyst, is processing a recent miscarriage. Her husband, David, takes a job in London so she spends days obsessing over renovating the kitchen while befriending a younger woman called Clementine who has moved into the building and is part of a radical feminist collective called les colleuses. Meanwhile, in 1972, Florence and Henry are redoing their kitchen. Florence is finishing her degree in psychology while hoping to get pregnant. But Henry isn't sure he's ready for fatherhood... Both sets of couples face the challenges of marriage, fidelity, and pregnancy. The characters and their ghosts bump into and weave around each other, not knowing that they once all inhabited the same space. A novel in the key of ric Rohmer, Scaffolding is about the bonds we create with people, and the difficulty of ever fully severing them; about the ways that people we've known live on in us; and about the way that the homes we make hold communal memories of the people who've lived in them and the stories that have been told there. 'Atmospheric and evocative, the prose elegant and poised' Observer

Bestselling author of Flaneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London, joins the crowds commuting by bus in the city of love. Written in iPhone notes and inspired by Perec and Ernaux, this chronicle of the everyday in a year marked by terrorism and her loss of a pregnancy is also a love letter to Paris on the bus.

An uplifting, gender-bending critique of how women negotiate public space Deborah Levy Guardian, Book of the Year

‘A glowing memoir of Provence’ New York Times M F K Fisher moved to Aix-en-Provence with her daughters after the Second World War. In Map of Another Town, she traces the history of this ancient and famous town, known for its tree-lined avenues, pretty fountains and ornate facades. Beyond the tourist sights, Fisher introduces us to its inhabitants: the waiters and landladies, down-and-outs and local characters - all recovering from the affects of the war in a drastically new France. A companion piece to The Gastronomical Me', in this memoir Fisher finds herself alone, older and with two small children to care for, while at the same time discovering a sense of belonging and acceptance.

• Ein Liebesbrief an Paris und eine Meditation darüber, wie es sich in zwei Jahrzehnten verändert hat - von der Autorin von »Flâneuse: Frauen erobern die Stadt« Als Flâneuse feierte Lauren Elkin die Spaziergängerin in der Stadt und zeigte, wie das ziellose Flanieren durch New York, Tokio, Venedig – vor allem aber Paris – die Seele belebt und den Geist fokussiert. In ihrem neuen Buch »Nr. 91/92« wird sie mit einem in iPhone-Notizen geschriebenen Liebesbrief an Paris ein Teil der pendelnden Masse im Bus. Ihr Ziel: Die Welt durch den Bildschirm ihres Telefons zu beobachten, statt ihr Telefon zu benutzen, um von der Welt abzulenken. Von Gedanken über Virginia Woolf und Georges Perec bis hin zu ihren ersten Eindrücken nach den Terroranschlägen von 2015 hinterfragt ihr Tagebuch die Grenzen zwischen Zusammengehörigkeit und Getrenntsein und zwischen Alltäglichem und Ereignisreichem, während sie Energie und Esprit einer besonderen Stadt und ihrer Menschen einfängt.