Forthcoming Release

Recordances

by Richard Appignanesi

Richard Appignanesi’s recent poetry in one landmark volume

Recordances is an intervention in politics of daily life, modernity, and a present world in Anthropocene crisis

This work distils the esteemed editor’s lifetime of reflections on a cultural legacy extending from St John of the Cross to Freud, and from Heidegger to Paul Celan.

Appignanesi is the author of the fiction trilogy Italia Perversa and the epic Yukio Mishima’s Report to the Emperor, among many other non-fiction works. Aditionally, he is former originating editor of the internationally renowned graphic Introducing series.

Praise for Richard Appignanesi

for Italia Perversa:

‘A tour of twentieth century European culture with inescapable echoes of Musil, Svevo and Kafka... A fretful, nervous brilliance playing over much of the book a piece of infinite fascination, the sort of novel which, for all its faults, jerks us out of our provincialism’

—Jonathan Keates, The Observer

for Yukio Mishima’s Report to the Emperor:

‘Yukio Mishima would have been proud to have written this novel himself.’

—Colin Wilson

‘Mightily impressive; an absorbing and fascinating novel.’

—William Boyd

‘Epic and ambitious. Mishima is both complex and alien to the West. Richard Appignanesi — a rare combination of intellect and storyteller — has dared to become his subject. The result makes compelling reading.’

—Arnold Wesker

‘This formidable literary achievement […] In this fictional autobiography, Appignanesi … imagines in macabre, shocking and often comic detail the life and suicide of the extraordinary Japanese writer’

—Penny Mountain, The Bookseller

About the Author

Richard Appignanesi was born in Montréal, Québec, in 1940 of Italian parents. He received a PhD in Classical Art History from the University of Sussex in 1973 on the origin of art in Greek critical thought.

As co-founder and director of the Writers & Readers Publishing Cooperative in 1974, he was originating editor of the internationally acclaimed graphic For Beginners series. As co-director of Icon Books in 1991, the series expanded under the Introducing imprint to over 90 titles, soon translated into a dozen languages. He originated the Manga Shakespeare series for Metro Media in 2007.

He was senior editor of the art journal Third Text and has curated exhibitions in London, Rome, Vienna and Kyiv. He served as reviews editor of the eminent Futures journal.

Appignanesi spans the divide between avant-garde and popular cultures to include Introducing titles on Freud and Existentialism, and graphic novels on Freud’s case histories and life, The Wolf Man and Hysteria.