Maths is not our strong point. Nor is science. As you may suspect, we at 4th Estate are more comfortable with words than with formulas. But, What We Cannot Know: Explorations at the Edge of Knowledge by Marcus du Sautoy is one of those books that makes us feel as though we can actually understand a subject that we’ve been grappling with for years. Another thing that we here in Marketing would like to know more about is cover art. So, we’ve asked Jonny Pelham, the designer of What We Cannot Know, to tell us about the artwork that encases du Sautoy’s thought-provoking expedition to the furthest reaches of modern science. Read more…
This month saw the re-publishing of Tim O’Brien’s classic Vietnam war novels: If I Die in a Combat Zone, Going After Cacciato, The Things they Carried, Northern Lights and In the Lake of the Woods. Tim O’Brien’s works have been hailed as some of the finest books to emerge from the Vietnam conflict, with New York Times Book Review saying: ‘A personal document of aching clarity … O’Brien brilliantly and quietly evokes the foot soldier’s daily life in the paddies and foxholes. …beautiful, painful…’ Read more…
Today sees the publication day of A Reunion of Ghosts by Judith Claire Mitchell, a novel so stylishly written that Harper’s Bazaar professed ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if Wes Anderson and Sofia Coppola are slugging it out for the film rights already.’ We took the chance to sit down with the cover designer Jo Walker and ask her exactly what in the novel inspired her to create a cover that somehow encompasses the themes and the style of the book so perfectly.
This autumn, we’re celebrating 30 years of 4th Estate, and with it, we’ve hand-picked 30 of our memorable, moving and award-winning titles. While remember, remembering the 5th of November, we’ll be looking beyond (or behind?) Bonfire Night, and reaching far back into our memories, touching on our specially selected classic 30 titles. Read more…
Today sees the release of We Should All Be Feminists, the captivating, forthright and truly inspirational essay from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, based on her 2013 TEDx Talk of the same name.
‘…an academic, a Nigerian woman, told me that feminism was not our culture, that feminism was un-African, and I was only calling myself a feminist because I had been influenced by Western books. (Which amused me, because much of my early reading was decidedly unfeminist: I must have read every single Mills & Boon romance published before I was sixteen. And each time I try to read those books called ‘classic feminist texts’, I get bored, and I struggle to finish them.) Read more…
