{"product_id":"writers-and-missionaries-essays-on-the-radical-imagination-9781804290590","title":"Writers and Missionaries: Essays on the Radical Imagination","description":"\u003cb\u003eWhat does it mean to be a politically committed writer?\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThrough a close reading of the lives and works of some of the greatest intellectuals of recent times, Adam Shatz asks: do writers have an ethical imperative to question injustice? How can one remain a dispassionate thinker when involved in the cut and thrust of politics? And, in an age of horror and crisis, what does it mean to be a committed writer? \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eShatz interrogates the major figures of twentieth and twenty-first century thought and finds within their lives and work the roots of our present intellectual and geopolitical situation. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eCharting the role of the committed intellectual through the work of Jean-Paul Sartre on the Algerian War and Edward Said's lifelong solidarity with the Palestinian people, to Fouad Ajami's role as the \"native informant\" for pro-intervention cause in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, alongside philosophers and critics Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and Claude Lévi-Strauss and the novelists Michel Houllebecq and Richard Wright, each struggled to reconcile their writing and their politics, their thought and their commitments. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003ci\u003eWriters and Missionaries\u003c\/i\u003e is an erudite and incisive work of intellectual elucidation and biographical enquiry that demands that we interrogate anew the relation of thought and action in the struggle for a more just world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAdam Shatz \u003c\/b\u003eis the US editor of \u003ci\u003eThe London Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e and a contributor to \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e, and other publications. He is also the host of the podcast \"Myself with Others\".\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Verso","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50568372781330,"sku":"9781804290590","price":25.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_f471e3fc-ba86-4cd9-bb42-9df7be415f66.jpg?v=1731942729","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/writers-and-missionaries-essays-on-the-radical-imagination-9781804290590","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}