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The Lonely City
Adventures in the Art of Being Alone
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Check link for latest rating. ( 36,164 ratings, 4,497 reviews)
Brief Description
'Wonderful and necessary' ANNE ENRIGHT ~ 'Stunning' DEBORAH LEVY ~ 'Beautiful' HANYA YANAGIHARA ~ 'Daring and seductive NEW YORK TIMES ~ 'Continually unexpected' PETER CAREY When Olivia Laing moved to New York City in her mid-thirties, she found herself inhabiting loneliness on a daily basis. Increasingly...
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See moreA beautiful 10th-anniversary hardback edition of the dazzling, taboo-breaking work that helped define contemporary hybrid non-fiction and established Olivia Laing as one of its essential voices
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Description
'Wonderful and necessary' ANNE ENRIGHT ~ 'Stunning' DEBORAH LEVY ~ 'Beautiful' HANYA YANAGIHARA ~ 'Daring and seductive NEW YORK TIMES ~ 'Continually unexpected' PETER CAREY
When Olivia Laing moved to New York City in her mid-thirties, she found herself inhabiting loneliness on a daily basis. Increasingly fascinated by this most shameful of experiences, she began to explore the lonely city by way of some of its most compelling artists, illuminating loneliness in a whole new light.
The Lonely City is a celebration of that strange and lovely state, intrinsic to the very act of being alive. Hailed as 'a new kind of literature' when it was first published and selling over two hundred thousand copies, Olivia Laing's dazzling book has been beloved by readers all over the world. Now, in this tenth anniversary edition, Laing reflects in a new afterword on how our experience of loneliness has changed over the course of a difficult decade.
"This book changed my life. It taught me how to fall in love with writing about art" -- KATY HESSEL, author of The Story of Art Without Men
"Triumphant . . . A brave writer whose books open up fundamental questions about life and art" ― Telegraph
"Luminously wise and deeply compassionate . . . A fierce and essential work" -- HELEN MACDONALD
"Wonderfully freewheeling . . . Constantly surprising . . . Inspired" ― Guardian
"Stunning . . . Laing has written a classic that will be cherished for years to come" -- DEBORAH LEVY
"Endlessly, compulsively fascinating" ― New Statesman
"Unusually brave . . . Sublime" ― The Times
"Laing cuts close to the bone of a universal yet often unrelatable state" ― Financial Times
"A gifted critic and biographer . . . a fascinating, eerie piece of writing" ― Sunday Times
"One of the finest writers of the new non-fiction . . . Compelling and original" ― Harper's Bazaar
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781837266456
Publisher: Canongate Books
Format: Hardback
Date Published: 04 June 2026
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Canongate Books
Edition: Main
Contributors:
- Afterword by Olivia Laing
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 30.0mm
Width: 141.0mm
Height: 220.0mm
Weight: 457g
Pages: 352
About the Author
Olivia Laing is an internationally acclaimed writer and critic. They're the author of eight books, including Funny Weather, Everybody and the Sunday Times number one bestseller The Garden Against Time. Laing's first novel, Crudo, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and in 2018 they were awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction. They are a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts and their books have been translated into twenty-one languages. Their latest novel is The Silver Book.
@olivialanguage | olivialaing.com
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In The Lonely City, Olivia Laing charts her journey through New York City in her mid-thirties, when she found herself grappling with an overwhelming sense of loneliness. Rather than succumb to this isolating experience, Laing delves deep into the fabric of the city's artistic landscape, exploring the intersections of solitude and creativity. Moving seamlessly through the works and lives of...Paperback$2799Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
19% offThe Garden Against Time
What a wonderful book this is. I loved the enchanting and beautifully written story but also the fascinating and thoughtful excursions along the way. – Nigel Slater A garden contains secrets, we all know that: buried elements that might put on strange growth or germinate in unexpected places. The garden that I chose had walls, but like every garden it...Paperback$2600Elsewhere:$3500Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Trip to Echo Spring
Why did numerous celebrated authors become entwined with the grip of alcoholism? In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing weaves an evocative journey across America, probing the intricate interplay between creativity and alcohol through the intertwined lives and works of six literary giants: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. Laing embarks...Paperback$2500Elsewhere:$2799Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
To the River
Over sixty years after Virginia Woolf's tragic drowning in the River Ouse, Olivia Laing embarks on a journey that intertwines the natural world with poignant reflections on life and literature. In To the River, Laing sets out to walk along the banks of this historic river, tracing its path from its source to the sea. This journey is not just...Paperback$2799Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The Silver Book
At once a queer love story and a noirish thriller, set in the dream factory of cinema, The Silver Book is a fictional account of real things, and an investigation into the difficult relationship between artifice and truth, illusion and reality, love and power. 'It is dangerous to want someone this much. He has always known it, from the very...Paperback$3100Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Pre-orderThe Silver Book
The Silver Book by Olivia Laing is a unique blend of queer love story and true crime thriller set against the backdrop of 1970s cinema, brought to life by the award-winning, bestselling author. It is September 1974. Two men meet by chance in Venice. One is a young English artist, in panicked flight from London. The other is Danilo Donati,...Paperback$2800Unit price /UnavailableOut 8 Sep 2026Pre-order -
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Funny Weather
In this remarkable, inspiring collection of essays, acclaimed writer and critic Olivia Laing makes a brilliant case for why art matters, especially in the turbulent political weather of the twenty first century. Funny Weather brings together a career's worth of Laing's writing about art and culture, examining its role in our political and emotional lives. She profiles Jean-Michel Basquiat and...PaperbackSold Out
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