Geoff Dyer

Jeff Atman, a journalist, is in Venice to cover the opening of the Biennale. He's expecting to see a load of art, go to a lot of parties, and drink too many bellinis. He's not expecting to meet the spellbinding Laura, who will completely transform his few days in the city. Another city, another assignment: this time on the banks...

From Amsterdam to Cambodia, from Rome to Indonesia, from New Orleans to Libya, and from Detroit to Ko Pha-Ngan, Geoff Dyer finds himself both floundering about in a sea of grievances and finding moments of transcendental calm. This aberrant quest for peak experiences leads, ultimately, to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, where, to quote Tarkovsky's Stalker, 'your most cherished...

As a child, Geoff Dyer spent long hours making and blotchily painting model fighter planes. So the adult Dyer jumped at the chance of a residency aboard an aircraft carrier. Another Great Day at Sea chronicles Dyer's experiences on the USS George H.W. Bush as he navigates the routines and protocols of 'carrier-world', from the elaborate choreography of the flight...

In the race to be first in describing the lost generation of the 1980s, Geoff Dyer in The Colour of Memory leads past the winning post. "We're not lost," one of his hero's friends says, "we're virtually extinct". It is a small world in Brixton that Dyer commemorates, of council flat and instant wasteland, of living on the dole and...

The Missing of the Somme has become a classic meditation upon war and remembrance. It weaves a network of myth and memory, photos and films, poetry and sculptures, graveyards and ceremonies that illuminate our understanding of, and relationship to, the Great War.

Walker is at a party where he meets Rachel. Two days later, she turns up at his apartment. However, it's not Walker she wants, but her husband Malory who has gone missing. She wants Walker to find him. So begins this strange, beautiful, road-movie of a novel that takes the hero across the vast landscape of middle America on the...

Great photographs change the way we see the world; The Ongoing Moment changes the way we look at both. With characteristic perversity and trademark originality, The Ongoing Moment is Dyer's unique and idiosyncratic history of photography. Seeking to identify their signature styles, Dyer looks at the ways that canonical figures such as Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Walker Evans, Kertesz, Dorothea...

'Moving, atmospheric, truthful, perceptive and hilariously funny - I loved it: a piece of our English history, the story of a vanished time, which feels close at hand but thoroughly gone. What a story. What a great story' TESSA HADLEY In Homework, Geoff Dyer reflects on his childhood and what it means to come of age in England in the...

Sitting down to write a book about his hero D. H. Lawrence, Geoff Dyer finds himself compelled to write about anything else. He is, in fact, compelled to do more or less anything else instead of writing. In Sicily, he is too preoccupied by his hatred of seafood to follow the great writer's footsteps; in Mexico, he cannot get beyond...

But Beautiful brings us Lester Young fading away in a hotel room, Charles Mingus storming down the streets of New York on a too-small bicycle, and Thelonious Monk creating his own private language on the piano. In eight poetically charged vignettes, Geoff Dyer skilfully evokes the embattled lives of the players who shaped modern jazz. He draws on photos and...

A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK In this endlessly stimulating investigation into 'things coming to an end, artists' last works, time running out', Geoff Dyer sets his own encounter with late middle age against the last days and last achievements of writers, painters, athletes and musicians who've mattered to him throughout his life. He examines Friedrich Nietzsche's breakdown...

'Wide-ranging and eclectic' TLS 'Seductively curious' Observer 'A visual and intellectual journey' Herald See/Saw is an illuminating history of how photographs frame and change our perspectives. Starting from single images by the world's most important photographers - from Eugene Atget to Alex Webb - Geoff Dyer shows us how to read a photograph, as he takes us through a series...

‘Quite possibly the best living writer in Britain’ - Daily Telegraph Much attention has been paid to so-called late style - but what about last style? When does last begin? How early is late? When does the end set in? In this endlessly stimulating investigation, Geoff Dyer sets his own encounter with late middle age against the last days and...

Born in 1958, the only child of a dinner lady and a sheet-metal worker, Geoff Dyer grew up in a world shaped by memories of shortages and the Second World War. It was a time of Airfix models, wargames, conkers and frugality: Geoff's father splurges on a mono record player — before imposing a blockade on buying records. But far...

Alive with insight, wit and Dyer's characteristic irreverence, this collection of essays offers a guide around the cultural maze, mapping a route through the worlds of literature, art, photography and music. Besides exploring what it is that makes great art great, Working the Room ventures into more personal territory with extensive autobiographical pieces—'On Being an Only Child', 'Sacked' and 'Reader's...