THE LANGUAGE OF HOUSES.

From one of "THIS COUNTRY'S MOST ABLE AND WITTY NOVELISTS" (New York Times) comes a mindexpanding exploration of buildings, architecture and the spaces we inhabit.

In 1981 Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alison Lurie published The Language of Clothes, a meditation on costume and fashion as an expression of history, social status and individual psychology. Amusing, enlightening and full of literary allusion, the book was highly praised and widely anthologized. Now Lurie has returned with a companion book, The Language of Houses, a lucid, provocative and entertaining look at how the architecture of buildings and the spaces within them both reflect and affect the people who inhabit them. Schools, churches, government buildings, museums, prisons, hospitals, restaurants, and of course, houses and apartments, all of them speak to human experience in vital and varied ways. The Language of Houses discusses historical and regional styles and the use of materials such as stone and wood and concrete, as well as contemplating the roles of stairs and mirrors, windows and doors, tiny rooms and cathedral-like expanses, illustrating its conclusions with illuminating literary references as well as the comments of experts in the field. The Language of Houses is an essential and highly entertaining new contribution to the literature of modern architecture. ALISON LURIE, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Foreign Affairs, has published ten books of fiction, five books of nonfiction and edited anthologies of children's literature. She is professor of English Emeritus at Cornell University. Praise for Alison Lurie's THE LANGUAGE OF HOUSES “Alison Lurie, in her lucid, jargon-free way, allows us to read what architecture is saying. She has culled the best ideas from a vast literature and passed it all through her brilliant mind.”—Edmund White “One can read Lurie as one might read Jane Austen, with continual delight.”—Joyce Carol Oates “There is no American writer I have read with more constant pleasure and sympathy over the years. Foreign Affairs earns the same shelf as Henry James and Edith Wharton.”—John Fowles "Alison Lurie, in her lucid, jargon-free way, allows us to read what architecture is saying. She has culled the best ideas from a vast literature and passed it all through her brilliant mind."Edmund White "There's much to absorb in this sequel to Alison Lurie's The Language of Clothes, but The Language of Houses is an extraordinarily absorbing book ­ it wears its learning lightly, holding this reader's attention the way a fine novel does. I was particularly fascinated by the linked chapters on religious buildings and museums."James McConkey, author of Court of Memory "The Language of Houses has every quality you would expect from a work by Alison Lurie: intelligence, authority, wit and charm."Louis Begley