- Hardcover: 672 pages
- Publisher: Hamish Hamilton Ltd; 1st ed. edition (26 Oct 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0241142997
- ISBN-13: 978-0241142998
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.2 x 6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 498,571 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
London: City of Disappearances
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
London is a city of disappearances and fallible memories. Alongside the contemporary city, of noise and celebrity, is that other city: of the dead, the unvoiced, the erased. Here there are fabulous identities which, freed from their mundane reality, survive as eternal fictions, and urban myths with more blood and vigour than the contemporary cartoons of manufactured notoriety. Iain Sinclair has long been fascinated by interzones, cracks, crannies, 'lost' biographies and myths of place. In "London: City of Disappearances" he turns away from official versions and approved histories, and, with the help of Tibor Fischer, Rachel Lichtenstein, Nicholas Royle, Sarah Wise and others, brings to light the fugitive scraps, ragpicker's bundles, faded newspaper cuttings and patterns in the dust.
About the Author
Iain Sinclair is the author of Downriver (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Encore Award); Landor's Tower; White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings; Lights Out for the Territory; Lud Heat; Rodinsky's Room (with Rachel Lichtenstein); Radon Daughters, London Orbital, Dining on Stones and Edge of the Orison. He lives in Hackney, East London.
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First Sentence
In the late 1930s, as an ex-art student, I was often in the West End of London, a frequenter of galleries and exhibitions. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
In the late 1930s, as an ex-art student, I was often in the West End of London, a frequenter of galleries and exhibitions. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Like Peter Ackroyd, Iain Sinclair is fond of a non-linear approach to the history and geography of a city and this collection of essays snakes around the mystery of London in much the same way as Ackroyd's "London: A Biography".
Perhaps because this is a compilation rather than a work by a single author, it's been more easily accepted as a fascinating fund of anecdote and history which doesn't need to adopt a chronological approach. Intermittently thrilling - and perfect to dip in and out of.
Perhaps because this is a compilation rather than a work by a single author, it's been more easily accepted as a fascinating fund of anecdote and history which doesn't need to adopt a chronological approach. Intermittently thrilling - and perfect to dip in and out of.
13 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
An ambitious volume which brings up some real gems courtesy of Marina Warner, Anthony Frewin, Will Self, Bill Drummond but precious few others. I can't help feeling that Mr Sinclair should have given his contributors a tighter brief or at least been a bit more generous with the scissors in the final edit. Eventually the writings become more and more disparate until what you get is an anthology of work all loosely connected to the capital in some way. Some of the entries (especially Sinclair's own ones) are genuinely baffling and the reader is given frustratingly little explanation to their appearance; if this is deliberate, it doesn't work.
If readers are looking for decent anthologies of London social history, myth and ephemera, there are other compendiums on the market that are far more worthwhile.
If readers are looking for decent anthologies of London social history, myth and ephemera, there are other compendiums on the market that are far more worthwhile.
4 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
IS creates an opportunity for some of his sycophantic cronies to cash in on his "name" hence the inclusion of at least one too many obscure and overblown unknowns
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