Intellectual, accessible, and stylishly bound, Nuar Alsadir’s Animal Joy is another clever, meaty, unpatronising book from Fitzcarraldo Editions that manages to remain clear and insightful without reverting to over-tell or obviousness.
The assumption of an intelligent reader makes the books by this publisher a pleasure to read, and this title, like one I read and reviewed previously, is again written by an author who asks the reader to use their brain, never spoon-feeding them or talking down.
If you’ve read those …For Dummies books, but also you’ve read Nietzsche, then this is on the spectrum closer to the latter, but full of contemporary air and breath, with personal stories about the writer’s children, about joining clown school, about receiving an email with the words “fuck you” in capital letters from a random woman, making Animal Joy a really juicy, joyful read. I love how Alsadir includes these experiences alongside items from contemporary culture, various studies, and the thoughts of poets, psychoanalysts, and philosophers, as well as mathematicians, politicians, novelists – anyone, anywhere, in fact.
Here’s a mind that can go anywhere, too, and we are taken on a fascinating journey with an astonishing number of brilliant insights along the way as a result. As a poet, I particularly appreciate their thoughts on that literary form: “Poetry needs to wholly kiss, have holy intensity”. Highly recommended.
Animal Joy, Nuar Alsadir (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Price: £12.99/£5.99 Ebook. Info: here
words MAB JONES
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