Abominations: Selected Essays from a Career of Courting Self-Destruction [Paperback]

“A rare voice, someone who challenges orthodoxies in the way that many journalists and public intellectuals claim to do but don’t. It is bracing to spend time in the company of such a smart, plain-spoken and unpredictable person.”—Wall Street Journal

A striking collection of essays from the prize-winning,New York Timesbestselling author ofShould We Stay or Should We Go, So Much for That,andThe Post-Birthday World.

Novelist, cultural observer, and social satirist Lionel Shriver is among the sharpest talents of our age. A writer who embraces “under-expressed, unpopular or downright dangerous” points of view, she filets cherished shibboleths and the conformity of thought and attitude that has overtaken us.

Bringing together thirty-five works curated from her many columns, features, essays, and op-eds for the likes of theSpectator, theGuardian,theNew York Times, Harper’s Magazine,theWall Street Journal,speeches and reviews, and some unpublished pieces,Abominationsreveals Shriver at her most iconoclastic and personal. Relentlessly skeptical, cutting, and contrarian, this collection showcases Shriver’s piquant opinions on a wide range of topics, including religion, politics, illness, mortality, family and friends, tennis, gender, immigration, consumerism, health care, and taxes.

In her characteristically frank manner, Shriver shrewdly skewers the concept of language “crimes,” while chafing at arbitrary limitations on speech and literature that crimp artistic expression and threaten intellectual freedom. Many an essay inAbominationsreflects sentiments that have “brought hell and damnation down on my head,” as she cheerfully explains, and have threatened her with “cancellation” more than once.

Throughout, Shriver offers insights on her nlƒB