An American Childhood
- 7 Apr 2016
- 9781782117766
- £7.99
- 272 pp
In a few words
The Pulitzer Prize-winner’s breathtaking childhood memoir, published for the first time in the UK
A remarkable work . . . Exceptional
Loving and lyrical, nostalgic without being wistful, this is a book about the capacity for joy
More about
the book
An American Childhood is the electrifying memoir of the wide-eyed and unconventional upbringing that influenced the lifetime love of nature and the stunning writing career of Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Dillard. From her mother’s boundless energy to her father’s low-budget horror movies, jokes and lonesome river trips down to New Orleans to get away, the events of Dillard’s 1950s Pittsburgh childhood loom larger than life.
An American Childhood fizzes with the playful observations and sparkling prose of this American master, illuminating the seemingly ordinary and yet always thrilling, dizzying moments of a childhood and adolescence lived fearlessly.
Dillard's style is spirited and gale-force. She raps out her opinions; lyrical, gleeful, cymbal-clashing, peppery. The best thing is her glee, a pied-piperish glee at being in the world, which she evokes better than anyone else
Robert Macfarlane
The trouble with hasty people like me is that we charge through our time on earth without noticing it. It was Annie Dillard who got me, before it was too late, to pay attention to where I was before I lost it. So I did. What abundance!
Richard Holloway
Annie Dillard is among the greatest nature writers who have ever lived. Like Thoreau, like Gilbert White, she combines a naturalist's sharp eye with a philosopher's curiosity and a poet's magical gift for language. Keen, urgent and impassioned, her subject is life itself, in all its teeming and marvellous forms
Olivia Laing
Annie Dillard's words are the outpouring of a brilliant mind tempered by a pleading heart. Her distinctive voice and incandescent imagery lifts us to heights few writers can ever hope to aspire to. I came to Annie's work through her Pulitzer winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and have hung on every word she has written ever since. This anthology is the perfect introduction to her luminous prose, her insightful wisdom and her powerful engagement with nature and the human spirit
John Lister-kaye
Annie Dillard
View profileAnnie Dillard was born in 1945 in Pennsylvania. She is a much-celebrated poet, novelist and essayist and author of thirteen books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and has received fellowship grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She was awarded the 2014 National Humanities Medal for her work deepening the understanding of the human experience.
