Geoff Dyer's Top Book Recommendations

Geoff DyerI think he’s really great. We’re talking about authors’ humanity – the capacity for empathy, this kind of stuff. With Kapuściński it seems to me you get all that, but it’s combined with politics and reportage telling you what’s going on in different places. Now, of course there are question marks about Kapuściński – about the reconcilability or not of the obligation to tell the truth and report... (Source)

Geoff DyerThis was published in 2002. The first book of Linqvist’s that I read was Exterminate All the Brutes, his great study of the genocidal impulse that he feels underlies the colonial project. (Source)

Geoff DyerThis book was a real revelation to me. As you say it is described as a collective biography – subtitled “War, Love and Literature, from Berlin to Los Angeles” – and I thought it was going to be what it says on the cover, a collective biography of these people. What I didn’t realise was it was going to be so novelistic. I just love the conceit of these German avant-garde composers all living quite... (Source)

Geoff DyerThis is a very recent book – it came out towards the end of 2011. He has uncovered and found out about the lives of 20 different people from different parts of the world – some are combatants, one is a doctor, there’s this cast of characters – and he narrates the war chronologically through their experiences of particular days. This gives a real sense both of people being at the mercy of history... (Source)

Geoff DyerI guess it’s good that we’re starting with this, because it’s a seriously off-putting book. It’s close to 1,200 pages – a travelogue-history of Yugoslavia. (Source)