In today’s crazily busy world the importance of making time for leisure is more vital than ever. Yet so many of us lack a talent for it. We are working longer hours, consuming more than ever before; technology erodes the work–life balance further; increasingly,people feel that only work gives existence meaning. In a world where time is money, what is the value of walking without purpose, socialising without networking, nesting when we could be on our laptops? Robert Dessaix shows, in this thoughtful and witty book, how taking leisure seriously givesus back our freedom – to enjoy life, to revel in it, in fact; to deepen our sense of who we are as human beings. He explains how we can reclaim our right to ‘rest well’, and to loaf, groom, nest and play, as he looks at leisure from many angles: reading, walking, travelling, learning languages, taking siestas and simply doing nothing. The result is a terrifically lively and engaging conversation that reminds us that at leisure we are at our most intensely and pleasurably human.

The Pleasures of Leisure

Politics & Social Sciences

Dessaix, Robert

Anthropology

Penguin Random House, Australia

The frank and intimate journey of self-discovery by author, critic and arts commentator Robert Dessaix. Confronting, revealing and candid, the book traces his life from adoption towards the end of World War II, to a most unusual childhood on Sydney's North Shore, to his fascination with Russia and his time spent studying in Cold War Moscow, and to his years spent criss-crossing the globe from Kashmir to Peru on various study trips. But a life that might have been exciting to others, to Robert was empty at its core. Constantly haunting him was the realisation that there was a "shaft of silence" running through his being - the question of who his natural mother was and what his origins were. A story of coming to terms with a new identity.

A mother's disgrace (Imprint lives)

Angus&Robertson

A Mother's Disgrace

A series of letters written by a seriously ill man, stricken with an incurable disease and residing in Italy, to his friend back home in Australia explore the sensuality and debauchery that underlie European literature

Night Letters: A Journey Through Switzerland and Italy

Literature & Fiction

Miazmov, Igor

British & Irish

St Martins Pr

For twenty nights in a hotel room in Venice, a traveler, recently diagnosed with an incurable illness, writes a letter home to a friend. He describes the kaleidoscopic journey he has just made across northern Italy from Switzerland, while reflecting on questions of mortality, seduction, and the search for paradise. Against a rich background of earlier journeys in literature, notably Mann's Death in Venice, Robert Dessaix creates a compelling and ultimately uplifting account of a life enriched by a heightened sense of mortality.

Night Letters: A Novel

Picador

For 20 nights in a hotel room in Venice, a traveler, recently diagnosed with an incurable illness, writes a letter home to a friend. He describes the journey he has just made across northern Italy from Switzerland, while reflecting on questions of mortality, seduction, and the search for paradise.

Night Letters

Contemporary

Pan Books, Ltd.

And so forth

And So Forth

Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev

Pan Macmillan/Australia

One Sunday afteron in a secluded valley in Normandy, Robert Dessaix chanced upon the castle where the famous French writer Andre Gide spent his childhood. Recalling the excitement Robert felt when he first read Gide as a teenager, he set off to recapture what it was that once drew him so strongly to this enigmatic figure. On a magic carpet ride from Lisbon to the edge of the Sahara, from Paris to the south of France and Algiers, Robert takes us to the places where the Nobel Prize-winning author, in ways still scandalous to modern sensibilities, lived out his unconventional ideas about love, marriage, sexuality and religion. Featuring meditations and conversations with fellow travellers on such diverse subjects as why we travel, growing old, illicit passions, and the essence of Protestantism - and illustrated with over 100 stunning illustrations and photos - Arabesques is Robert Dessaix and travel memoir at their absolute finest.

Arabesques

Biographies & Memoirs

Memoirs

Picador Australia

Part of a series that pairs leading Australian thinkers and cultural figures with important themes in life, this examination tackles the meanings of the word humbug in the modern world. Blending pop culture, current events, and literary references, this essay explores the spectrum of lying, from dishonesty to hypocrisy, with eloquence and humor.

On Humbug (Little Books on Big Themes)

Social Sciences

Melbourne University Press

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Books by Dessaix, Robert