In this luminous novel -- winner of Britain's prestigious Booker Prize -- John Berger relates the story of "G.," a young man forging an energetic sexual career in Europe during the early years of this century. With profound compassion, Berger explores the hearts and minds of both men and women, and what happens during sex, to reveal the conditions of the Don Juan's success: his essential loneliness, the quiet cumulation in each of his sexual experiences of all of those that precede it, the tenderness that infuses even the briefest of his encounters, and the way women experience their own extraordinariness through their moments with him. All of this Berger sets against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi and the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1898, the Boer War, and the first flight across the Alps, making G. a brilliant novel about the search for intimacy in history's private moments.
In this luminous novel -- winner of Britain's prestigious Booker Prize -- John Berger relates the story of "G.," a young man forging an energetic sexual career in Europe during the early years of this century. With profound compassion, Berger explores the hearts and minds of both men and women, and what happens during sex, to reveal the conditions of the Don Juan's success: his essential loneliness, the quiet cumulation in each of his sexual experiences of all of those that precede it, the tenderness that infuses even the briefest of his encounters, and the way women experience their own extraordinariness through their moments with him. All of this Berger sets against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi and the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1898, the Boer War, and the first flight across the Alps, making G. a brilliant novel about the search for intimacy in history's private moments.
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3 books in catalog
Art criticism and fiction underwent a major shift when television essays and experimental novels began demystifying traditional visual culture and social hierarchies. John Peter Berger, born in 1926 and dying in 2017, was an English art critic, novelist, painter, and poet who reshaped how audiences analyze images and storytelling. His essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, created alongside the groundbreaking BBC television series of the same name, demystified art history and remains a standard university text on visual culture.
Born John Peter Berger in London in 1926, he trained as a painter at the Central School of Art and Chelsea School of Art after serving in the British Army from 1944 to 1946. During the 1950s, he taught drawing, exhibited his artwork in London galleries, and began writing regular art criticism for publications such as the New Statesman and Tribune. Believing that writing offered a more direct medium for expressing his Marxist political views and social critique, he shifted his primary focus from painting to literature. He later left England and lived in France for over fifty years, spending decades in the rural peasant community of Quincy before passing away in 2017 in the Paris suburb of Antony.
Berger's literary and critical approach merged rigorous social analysis, historical context, and formal experimentation across more than thirty published works. In critical collections like About Looking and Ways of Seeing, he exposed how ideology, class, and gender influence visual perception and artistic appreciation. His fiction incorporated modernist techniques, political commentary, and intimate observational detail to examine human labor, migration, and power dynamics. By collaborating with photographers, filmmakers, and translators, Berger constantly pushed the boundaries of multi-disciplinary storytelling while maintaining a steadfast commitment to political engagement and the dignity of everyday life.
3 books in catalog
Art criticism and fiction underwent a major shift when television essays and experimental novels began demystifying traditional visual culture and social hierarchies. John Peter Berger, born in 1926 and dying in 2017, was an English art critic, novelist, painter, and poet who reshaped how audiences analyze images and storytelling. His essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, created alongside the groundbreaking BBC television series of the same name, demystified art history and remains a standard university text on visual culture.
Born John Peter Berger in London in 1926, he trained as a painter at the Central School of Art and Chelsea School of Art after serving in the British Army from 1944 to 1946. During the 1950s, he taught drawing, exhibited his artwork in London galleries, and began writing regular art criticism for publications such as the New Statesman and Tribune. Believing that writing offered a more direct medium for expressing his Marxist political views and social critique, he shifted his primary focus from painting to literature. He later left England and lived in France for over fifty years, spending decades in the rural peasant community of Quincy before passing away in 2017 in the Paris suburb of Antony.
Berger's literary and critical approach merged rigorous social analysis, historical context, and formal experimentation across more than thirty published works. In critical collections like About Looking and Ways of Seeing, he exposed how ideology, class, and gender influence visual perception and artistic appreciation. His fiction incorporated modernist techniques, political commentary, and intimate observational detail to examine human labor, migration, and power dynamics. By collaborating with photographers, filmmakers, and translators, Berger constantly pushed the boundaries of multi-disciplinary storytelling while maintaining a steadfast commitment to political engagement and the dignity of everyday life.
