Kant's Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write

''An uplifting work: complex, precise and bracing''Susie Boyt, Financial Times

''A profound book about the intrication of literature and life, about the modest, miraculous ways art helps us to live'' Garth Greenwell

In twenty-nine intimate, brilliant and funny essays, Claire Messud reflects on a childhood move from her Connecticut home to Australia; the complex relationship between her modern Canadian mother and a fiercely single French Catholic aunt; and a trip to Beirut, where her pied-noir father had once lived, while he was dying. She meditates on contemporary classics from Kazuo Ishiguro, Teju Cole, Rachel Cusk and Valeria Luiselli; examines three facets of Albert Camus and The Stranger; and tours her favorite paintings at Boston''s Museum of Fine Arts. Crafting a vivid portrait of a life in celebration of the power of literature, Messud proves once again ''an absolute master storyteller'' (Rebecca Carroll, <