In eight poetically charged vignettes, Geoff Dyer skillfully evokes the music and the men who shaped modern jazz. Drawing on photos, anecdotes, and, most important, the way he hears the music, Dyer imaginatively reconstructs scenes from the embattled lives of some of the greats: Lester Young fading away in a hotel room; Charles Mingus storming down the streets of New York on a too-small bicycle; Thelonious Monk creating his own private language on the piano. However, music is the driving force of But Beautiful, and wildly metaphoric prose that mirrors the quirks, eccentricity, and brilliance of each musician's style.

BUT BEAUTIFUL

Literature & Fiction

DYER, Geoff

Contemporary

RANDOM HOUSE UK

The Search

Penguin

This novel, from the author of "Ways of Telling", concerns a group of friends in Brixton whose lives offer a complex commentary on the experience of post-modernity.

The Colour of Memory

JONATHAN CAPE.

The Missing of the Somme

"Head bowed, rifle on his back, a soldier is silhouetted against the going down of the sun, looking at the grave of a dead comrade, remembering him..." A poetic and impressionistic tribute to those who perished in World War I--and those who lived, haunted by their memories. "Brilliant--the Great War book of our time."--Observer.

The missing of the Somme

History

Europe

Hamish Hamilton

Walker is at a party where he meets Rachel. Two days later she turns up at his apartment. But it's not Walker she wants, but her husband Malory who has gone missing. She wants Walker to find him. The author won the 1992 Somerset Maugham Award for "A Book About Jazz".

The search

Hamish Hamilton Ltd.

A New York Times Notable Book A Best Book of the Year: The Economist, The New Yorker, San Francisco Chronicle, Slate.com, and Time In Venice, at the Biennale,Â a jaded, bellini-swigging journalist named Jeff AtmanÂ meets a beautiful woman and they embark on a passionate affair. In Varanasi, an unnamed journalist (who may or may not be Jeff) joins thousands of pilgrims on the banks of the holy Ganges. He intends to stay for a few days but ends up remaining for months.Â Their journeyâ€”as only the irrepressibly entertaining Geoff Dyer could conjureâ€”makes for an uproarious, fiendishly inventive novel of Italy and India, longing andÂ lust, and the prospect of neurotic enlightenment.

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi: A Novel

Literary

Pantheon

From a writer whose mastery encompasses fiction, criticism, and the fertile realm between the two, comes a new book that confirms his reputation for the unexpected. In Zona, Geoff Dyer attempts to unlock the mysteries of a film that has haunted him ever since he first saw it thirty years ago: Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. (“Every single frame,” declared Cate Blanchett, “is burned into my retina.”) As Dyer guides us into the zone of Tarkovsky’s imagination, we realize that the film is only the entry point for a radically original investigation of the enduring questions of life, faith, and how to live. In a narrative that gives free rein to the brilliance of Dyer’s distinctive voice—acute observation, melancholy, comedy, lyricism, and occasional ill-temper—Zona takes us on a wonderfully unpredictable journey in which we try to fathom, and realize, our deepest wishes. Zona is one of the most unusual books ever written about film, and about how art—whether a film by a Russian director or a book by one of our most gifted contemporary writers—can shape the way we see the world and how we make our way through it.

Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

A New York Times Notable Book A Best Book of the Year: The Economist, The New Yorker, San Francisco Chronicle, Slate.com, and Time In Venice, at the Biennale, a jaded, bellini-swigging journalist named Jeff Atman meets a beautiful woman and they embark on a passionate affair. In Varanasi, an unnamed journalist (who may or may not be Jeff) joins thousands of pilgrims on the banks of the holy Ganges. He intends to stay for a few days but ends up remaining for months. Their journey—as only the irrepressibly entertaining Geoff Dyer could conjure—makes for an uproarious, fiendishly inventive novel of Italy and India, longing and lust, and the prospect of neurotic enlightenment.

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi

Humor

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

A Huffington Post Best Book of the Year There is no other writer at work today like the award-winning Geoff Dyer. Here he embarks on an investigation into Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, the masterpiece of cinema that has haunted him since he first saw it thirty years ago.

Dramas & Plays

The Missing of the Somme is part travelogue, part meditation on remembrance—and completely, unabashedly, unlike any other book about the First World War. Through visits to battlefields and memorials, Geoff Dyer examines the way that photographs and film, poetry and prose determined—sometimes in advance of the events described—the way we would think about and remember the war. With his characteristic originality and insight, Dyer untangles and reconstructs the network of myth and memory that illuminates our understanding of, and relationship to, the Great War.

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Vintage

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by DYER, Geoff. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by DYER, Geoff

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by DYER, Geoff. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

BUT BEAUTIFUL

The Search

The Colour of Memory

The missing of the Somme

The search

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi: A Novel

Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi

Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room

The Missing of the Somme