ABOMINATIONS

A striking collection of essays from the prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Should We Stay or Should We Go, So Much for That, and The Post-Birthday World, Lionel Shriver.

Novelist, cultural observer, and social satirist Lionel Shriver is among the sharpest talents of our age. Bringing together thirty-five works curated from her many columns, features, essays, and op-eds for the likes of the Spectator, the Guardian, the New York Times, Harper's Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, speeches and reviews, and some unpublished pieces, ABOMINATIONS reveals Shriver at her most iconoclastic and personal. Relentlessly skeptical, cutting, and contrarian, this collection showcases Shriver's opinions on a wide range of topics, including religion, politics, illness, mortality, family and friends, tennis, gender, immigration, consumerism, health care, and taxes. In her characteristically frank manner, Shriver shrewdly skewers the concept of language "crimes," while chafing at arbitrary limitations on speech and literature that crimp artistic expression and threaten intellectual freedom. Each essay in ABOMINATIONS reflects sentiments that have "brought hell and damnation down on my head," as she cheerfully explains, and have threatened her with "cancellation" more than once. Throughout, Shriver offers insights on her novels and explores the perks and pitfalls of becoming a successful artist. A timely synthesis of Shriver's expansive work, ABOMINATIONS reveals this provocative, talented writer at her most assured. Lionel Shriver's fiction includes The Mandibles; Property; the National Book Award finalist So Much for That; the New York Times bestseller The Post-Birthday World; and the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin, adapted for a 2010 film starring Tilda Swinton. Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. She's a regular columnist for the Spectator in Britain and Harper's Magazine in the US. She lives in London and Brooklyn, New York.