So writes Jenny Diski of the parent she has neither seen nor heard from since 1966, the year her father died.
In search of an escape from her suicidal sexually abusive parents, Diski spends her teenage years in the oblivion of heavy drug use and psychiatric wards. As an adult she finds a new haven: the boundless, blank iciness of Antarctica where everything "is colored white and filled with a singing silence."
This blistering account interweaves the story of the author's journey to the end of the earth, her daughter's search for Diski's missing mother, and Diski's own search of her memory-hardened heart.

Skating to Antarctica: A Journey to the End of the World

Biographies & Memoirs

Diski, Jenny

Community & Culture

Ecco

“Caustically funny and ebullient stories. . . . Diski’s is the kind of voice of which we need more, of which we now have one fewer. But she has paved a subversive path through the forest for others to follow.” -- Vanity Fair
*Named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2017*
WITH A PREFACE BY HEIDI JULAVITS, AUTHOR OF THE FOLDED CLOCK
The only story collection from the beloved Jenny Diski—darkly funny, subversive, sexy, and eccentric tales from one of the most original and intelligent voices of our time.
Jenny Diski’s prose is as sharp and steely as her imagination is wild and wondrous. When she died of cancer in April 2016, after chronicling her illness in strikingly honest essays in the London Review of Books, readers, admirers, and critics around the world mourned the loss. In a cool and unflinching tone that came to define her singular voice, she explored the subjects of sex, power, domesticity, femininity, hysteria, and loneliness with humor and honesty, 
The stories in The Vanishing Princess showcase a rarely seen side of this beloved writer, channeling both the piercing social examination of her nonfiction and the vivid, dreamlike landscapes of her novels. In a Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale turned on its head, a miller’s daughter rises to power and wealth to rule over her kingdom and outwit the title villain. “Bathtime” tells the story of a woman’s life through her attempts to build the perfect bathtub, chasing an elusive moment of peace. In “Short Curcuit,” the author mines her own bouts in and out of mental institutions outside London to question whether those we think are mad are really the sanest among us. 
Longtime fans of Diski and those who have discovered her since her death will find much to treasure here, in her only short story collection, released in the US for the very first time. The Vanishing Princess is another vital stop on Jenny Diski’s journey for meaning and beauty in her prolific writing, one that feels as fresh and necessary as if it were brand-new.

The Vanishing Princess: Stories (Art of the Story)

Literature & Fiction

United States

The story of Nony, who is blind and dumb and who has nothing else to do but to tell the story of her remarkable mother, Frances. Through the symbiotic wisdom of mother and daughter and through the sharp and darkly humorous consciousness of Nony, the author reveals a new perspective on ourselves. Jenny Diski is the author of "Nothing Natural" and "Rainforest".

LIKE MOTHER

Contemporary

RANDOM HOUSE UK

A novel that explores the nature of belief, the boundaries between madness and sanity, revelation and delusion, and good and evil.

Again

Rainforest

Viking Pr

Daphne Drummond - ex-novelist and trainee baglady - decides it's high time she took a lover. This comedy of lust and noble failure begins when Daphne sets her sights on her landlord, Liam, a drunk whose only pleasures are avoiding work and fantasizing about his young wife's infidelities.

Happily Ever After

London, Hamilton (1991)

The Dream Mistress

The dream mistress

Weidenfeld&Nicolson

Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Captain FitzRoy of "The Beagle", a chatty orangutan and mad Charlotte collide in this wicked novel of contemporary life.

Monkey's Uncle

TRAFALGAR SQUARE +

This is a collection of stories. They move between differing locations - Caribbean paradises, seedy apartments, fairytale towers - and explore subjects contemporary and complex.

The Vanishing Princess

Orion Publishing Co

What I Don't Know About Animals

What does novelist, essayist, and memoirist Jenny Diski know about animals? She wasn't really sure as she began to write this book, and she may not be sure now. But of this she is certain: our relationships with, and attitudes toward, animals are really worth thinking about. In What I Don't Know About Animals, she shows why. 
Diski sets out on her wide-ranging investigation by remembering the stuffed cuddly creatures from her childhood, the animal books she read, the cartoons she watched, the strays she found. She considers the animals who have lived and still live with her (most especially Bunty the cat), animals she has encountered close up, and those she has feared. She examines human beings, too, and how they have looked at, studied, treated, and written about the non-human creatures of our shared planet. Ranging still further, the author interviews scientists, discusses Derrida and his cat, and observes elephants in Kenya, always seeking the key to the complex relationship we in the modern West have with animals. 
Subtle, intelligent, and always engaging, this book is a brilliant exploration of what it means to be human and what it means to be animal, and the uncertainty of what we can know about either.

Sports & Outdoors

Yale University Press

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Books by Diski, Jenny