Best Selling Books by Judith Thurman

A dazzling biography of the French literary superstar Colette, who is also the subject of a major motion picture. “A fine and intelligent biography of Colette, with her long tumultuous life and the great body of her work scrupulously considered and presented with style.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK AWARD • NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD Having spent her childhood in the shadow of an overpowering mother, Colette escaped at age twenty into a turbulent marriage with the sexy, unscrupulous Willy—a literary charlatan who took credit for her bestselling Claudine novels. Weary of Willy’s sexual domination, Colette pursued an extremely public lesbian love affair with a niece of Napoleon’s. At forty, she gave birth to a daughter who bored her, at forty-seven she seduced her teenage stepson, and in her seventies she contributed to the pro-Nazi press during the Occupation, even though her beloved third husband, a Jew, had been arrested by the Gestapo. And all the while, this incomparable woman poured forth a torrent of masterpieces, including Gigi, Sido, Cheri, and Break of Day. Judith Thurman, author of the National Book Award-winning biography of Isak Dinesen, portrays Colette as a thoroughly modern woman: frank in her desires, fierce in her passions, forever reinventing herself. Rich with delicious gossip and intimate revelations, shimmering with grace and intelligence, Secrets of the Flesh is one of the great biographies of our time. Chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by The Village Voice and Newsday “[Colette] has been the subject of . . . a half-dozen significant biographies over the past thirty years. Yet this one by Judith Thurman will be hard to top. . . . Its prose is smoothly urbane, at times aphoristic, always captivating.”—The Washington Post Book World “It will stand as literature in its own right.”—Richard Bernstein, The New York Times “[An] essential biography by a stylish writer of great sympathetic understanding and intellectual authority.”—Philip Roth

WINNER OF THE 2023 PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD FOR THE ART OF THE ESSAY A collection of essays from Judith Thurman, the National Book Award–winning biographer and New Yorker staff writer. Judith Thurman, a prolific staff writer at The New Yorker for more than two decades, has gathered a selection of her essays and profiles in A Left-Handed Woman. They consider our culture in all its guises: literature, history, politics, gender, fashion, and art, though their paramount subject is the human condition. Thurman is one of the preeminent essayists of our time—“a master of vivisection,” as Kathryn Harrison wrote in The New York Times. “When she’s done with a subject, it’s still living, mystery intact.”

Judith Thurman ''s classic work explores Dinesen''s life - her privileged but unhappy childhood in Denmark, her marriage to Baron Blixen, their immigration to Africa on the eve of World War I, and her passionate affair with Denys Finch Hatton. Until the appearance of this book, the life and art of Isak Dinesen have been - as Dinesen herself wrote of two lovers in a tale - "a pair of locked caskets, each containing the key to the other."

Cleopatra''s Nose is an exuberant gathering of essays and profiles representing twenty years of Judith Thurman''s celebrated writing, particularly her fascination with human vanity, femininity, and "women''s work"—from haute couture to literature to commanding empires. The subjects are iconic (Jackie, the Brontës, Toni Morrison, Anne Frank) and multifarious (tofu and performance art, pornography and platform shoes, kimonos and bulimia); all inspire dazzling displays of craft, wit, penetration, and intelligence. Here we find explorations of voracity: hunger for sex, food, experience, and transcendence; see how writers from Flaubert to Nadine Gordimer have engaged with history; meet eminent Victorians and the greats of fashion. Whether reporting on hairstyles, strolling the halls of power, or deftly unpacking novels and their writers, Thurman never fails to provoke, inspire, captivate, and enlighten. Cleopatra''s Nose is an embarrassment of riches from one of our great literary journalists.

Summary: Explores five women poets through brief biographies and selections of their poetry.

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873-1954) fue la primera mujer moderna del siglo XX. Su fascinante vida arranca en la época del decadentismo de finales del siglo XIX y termina en los años cincuenta, rodeada de gatos en un lujoso apartamento de París, después de pasar por los escenarios, ambientes, movimientos artísticos y hechos históricos más destacados de su tiempo: los salones mundanos de la Belle Époque, el ambiente del Lesbos finisecular, el bajo mundo del music-hall y el cabaret, el periodismo y la literatura, las trincheras de la Primera Guerra Mundial, el incipiente arte del cinematógrafo, los felices años veinte, los nazis en París… Sin embargo, a pesar de su celebridad como novelista y de ser una de las personalidades más conocidas de Francia, fue una mujer profundamente reservada y recelosa, que se resistía ferozmente a ser conocida.

A gathering of essays and profiles representing 20 years of Judith Thurman¿s celebrated writing, particularly her fascination with human vanity, femininity, and ¿women¿s work¿ -- from haute couture to literature to commanding empires. The subjects are iconic (Jackie, the Brontes, Toni Morrison, Anne Frank) and multifarious (tofu and performance art, pornography and propaganda, kimonos and bulimia); all inspire dazzling displays of craft, wit and intelligence. Here we find explorations of voracity: for sex, food, experience, and transcendence; see how writers from Flaubert to Nadine Gordimer have engaged with history; meet eminent Victorians and the greats of fashion. ¿Thurman never fails to provoke, inspire, captivate, and enlighten.¿