Joan Didion

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion is a profoundly moving and unflinchingly honest memoir that delves deep into the heart of grief and mourning. This poignant narrative recounts Didion's life-altering year following the sudden death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and the severe illness of their only daughter, Quintana Roo. In the days leading up to Christmas...

Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience – classics which will endure for generations to come. A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty. John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their daughter fall ill. At first,...

Play It As It Lays is a striking exploration of American life in the late 1960s, penned by the acclaimed author Joan Didion, also known for her works The White Album and The Year of Magical Thinking. Set against the arid backdrop of the Nevada desert and the insidious glitter of Hollywood, this novel revolves around Maria Wyeth, a once-promising...

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion is a seminal collection of essays that offers an incisive look into the 1960s America. Published in 1968, this work captures the tumultuous spirit of the era, delving into the cultural and political upheavals that defined the decade. With an unparalleled reportorial voice, Didion chronicles her experiences and observations, shedding light on the rapid...

An extraordinary, previously unpublished work from the author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights, Joan Didion. In November 1999, Joan Didion began seeing a psychiatrist because, as she wrote to a friend, her family had had 'a rough few years.' She described the sessions in a journal she created for her husband, John Gregory Dunne. For several...

Joan Didion’s hugely influential collection of essays which defines, for many, the America which rose from the ashes of the Sixties. We tell ourselves stories in order to live. The princess is caged in the consulate. The man with the candy will lead the children into the sea. In this now legendary journey into the hinterland of the American psyche,...

El Salvador, 1982, is at the height of a ghastly civil war. Joan Didion travels from battlefields to body dumps, interviews a puppet president, considers the distinctly Salvadorean meaning of the verb 'to disappear' and trains a merciless eye not only on the terror there but also on the depredations and evasions of US foreign policy. Salvador is a restless...

A ruthless and unflinching examination of American life in the late 1960s, from the author of The Year of Magical Thinking. One thing in my defence, not that it matters: I know what ‘nothing’ means, and keep on playing Somewhere out beyond Hollywood, hollowed-out actress Maria Wyeth’s life plays out in a numbing routine of perpetual freeway driving. In her...

From one of our most powerful writers, a classic work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter. Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion examines her thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness, and growing old. Blue Nights opens...

The perfect book for all the new readers brought to Didion through her bestselling The Year of Magical Thinking. This hardcover omnibus edition of Didion's collected nonfiction contains her final four books: Blue Nights, South and West, Let Me Tell You What I Mean, and her bestselling and most famous work, The Year of Magical Thinking. In her essay Why...

Twelve early pieces never before collected that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of Joan Didion. Mostly drawn from the earliest part of her astonishing five-decade career, the wide-ranging pieces in this collection include Didion writing about a Gamblers Anonymous meeting, a visit to San Simeon, and a reunion of WWII veterans in Las Vegas, and about...

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader. Set in a place beyond good and evil—literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but...

From one of the most important chroniclers of our time, come two extended excerpts from her never-before-seen notebooks – writings that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary writer. South and West by Joan Didion presents a look into the notebooks in which she has always kept records of overheard dialogue, observations, interviews, and drafts...

From one of our most iconic and influential writers: twelve pieces never before collected that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of this legendary figure. Mostly drawn from the earliest part of her astonishing five-decade career, Didion writes about a Gamblers Anonymous meeting, a visit to William Randolph Hearst's castle at San Simeon, a reunion of WWII...

The iconic writer whose prose was as influential as it is unmistakably hers is joined in conversation with Sheila Heti, Hilton Als, Dave Eggers, Hari Kunzru and many more. Some writers define a generation. Some a genre. Joan Didion did both, and much more. Didion rose to prominence with her nonfiction collection, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and she quickly became the...

Celebrated, iconic, and indispensable, Joan Didion's first work of nonfiction, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, is considered a watershed moment in American writing. First published in 1968, the collection was critically praised as one of the "best prose written in this country." More than perhaps any other book, this collection by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era captures...

First published in 1979, Joan Didion's The White Album records indelibly the upheavals and aftermaths of the 1960s. Examining key events, figures, and trends of the era—including Charles Manson, the Black Panthers, and the shopping mall—through the lens of her own spiritual confusion, Joan Didion helped to define mass culture as we now understand it. Written with a commanding sureness...

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER‘Utterly fascinating’ NEW YORK TIMES‘An act of intimate storytelling’ VOGUE‘A profound, rich document’ NEW STATESMANA deeply moving, newly discovered journal from one of America’s most iconic writers, Joan Didion, the author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights. A pile of neatly typed pages was found in Joan Didion’s office after her death....

This is a surprising portrait of the pastel city, a masterly study of Cuban immigration and exile, and a sly account of vile moments in the Cold War. Miami may be the sunniest place in America but this is Didion's darkest book, in which she explores American efforts to overthrow the Castro regime, Miami's civic corruption and racist treatment of...