{"title":"Books by Bart van Es","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780241978726","title":"The Cut Out Girl","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWINNER OF THE SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY PRIZE 2018\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eSUNDAY TIMES \u003c\/i\u003ePAPERBACK OF THE YEAR 2019\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'A masterpiece of history and memoir'  \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eEvening Standard\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Superb. This is a necessary book - painful, harrowing, tragic, but also uplifting' \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLittle Lien wasn't taken from her Jewish parents in the Hague - she was given away in the hope that she might be saved. Hidden and raised by a foster family in the provinces during the Nazi occupation, she survived the war only to find that her real parents had not. Much later, she fell out with her foster family, and Bart van Es - the grandson of Lien's foster parents - knew he needed to find out why.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHis account of tracing Lien and telling her story is a searing exploration of two lives and two families. It is a story about love and misunderstanding and about the ways that our most painful experiences - so crucial in defining us - can also be redefined.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Luminous, elegant, haunting - I read it straight through' \u003c\/b\u003ePhilippe Sands, author \u003ci\u003eof East West Street\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Deeply moving. Writes with an almost Sebaldian simplicity and understatement' \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eSensational and gripping\u003c\/b\u003e . . .\u003cb\u003e shedding light on some of the most urgent issues of our time' \u003c\/b\u003eJudges of the Costa Book of the Year 2018\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43406013464754,"sku":"9780241978726","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780241978726.jpg?v=1786012828"},{"product_id":"9780198723356","title":"Shakespeare's Comedies","description":"From The Two Gentlemen of Verona in the early 1590s to The Two Noble Kinsmen at the end of his career around 1614, Shakespeare wrote at least eighteen plays that can be called 'comedies': a far higher number than that for any other genre in which he wrote. So what is a Shakespearean comedy? We associate these plays with such themes as mistaken identities, happy marriages, and exuberant cross dressing, but how representative are these of the oeuvre as a whole? In this Very Short Introduction, Bart van Es explores the full range of the playwright's comic writing, from the neat classical plotting of early works like The Comedy of Errors to the corrupt world of the so-called problem plays, written in the middle years of Shakespeare's life. Examining Shakespeare's influences and sources, van Es compares his plays to those of his rivals, and looks at the history of the plays in performance, from the biographies of Shakespeare's original actors to the plays' endless reinvention in modern stage productions and in films. Identifying the key qualities that make Shakespearean comedy distinctive, van Es traces the changing nature of Shakespeare's comic writing over the course of a career that spanned nearly a quarter century of theatrical change.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56227133456757,"sku":"9780198723356","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780198723356_eb689c15-6106-4b50-a439-e3d5867891f4.jpg?v=1786012207"},{"product_id":"true-fire","title":"True Fire","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Spellbinding, elegant, and urgent . . . Held me from the first moment to the last' \u003c\/b\u003eKatherine Rundell\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe great quest of Augustine’s life was for truth. This was his true fire.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eToday, we are still the product of Augustine’s thinking, only most of us don’t know it. Our world is shaped by his ideas on time and language, his understanding of the self, his theory of ‘Just War’, his attitudes to sex and the body, his conception of God. Augustine wrote the world’s first autobiography, the first soliloquy, and he gave us the concept of Original Sin.  He was both a wily pragmatist and an absolutist, a hero and a warning.  He lived through an age of catastrophe, the fall of the Roman Empire, and his writing speaks to a future that is almost upon us.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eInhabiting the four places that changed him – Milan, Cassiciacum, Ostia and Hippo – \u003ci\u003eTrue Fire\u003c\/i\u003e invites us to see Augustine anew. Van Es’s Augustine speaks to a twenty-first-century sense of crisis: climate change, mass migration, viral media, and the question of what we should believe and why. This is biography at its most original.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57524710048117,"sku":"9780571392285","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571392285.jpg?v=1787742762"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-bart-van-es.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}