Lifescapes

This thought-provoking and beautifully written book blends memoir with poetry and biography in search of what elements can evoke the character of a person * Financial Times, Books of the Year *
‘I think of my work as catching souls,’ writes Ann Wroe, the obituaries editor of The Economist, at the start of this book… How she goes about capturing them all is a fascinating business * Sunday Times, Books of the Year *
Seamlessly merges scenes from the author’s life with the overflow from her admirably humane Economist obituaries… This glimpse of Wroe at work, enriched with stories from her private notebooks, is a treat akin to, borrowing her words, ‘wild plums fallen in the grass’ * Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year *
Beautifully written, the prose witty, twisting and sensuous, but it is sharp, too * The Times *
What a treat it is to read a writer at the top of her game… Astonishing… Lifescapes is the universe in miniature * Daily Telegraph *
A brave, unfashionable and out of the ordinary book… A delight… Lifescapes encourages us to take a deep breath, contemplate life more keenly and acknowledge the miraculous if – and when – we find it * Observer *
Evocative and beautifully written * Financial Times *
This is biography as empathy and even hyper-empathy… Wroe operates like a kind of tuning fork… She seems to feel the energy that thrums in people, nature and objects… Compelling * Times Literary Supplement *
Although the book is part memoir, part essay on the art of biography, it is really about the breath of life itself. Wroe’s writing is intense and visionary, at times almost ecstatic. Reader, dive in… Her voice, her writing, already add such consonance, such alert and graceful rapture, to the music of the world * Spectator *
She’s a genius, I believe, because she lights up every subject she touches – Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall

Ann Wroe is the Obituaries editor of The Economist, and has written its weekly obituary for almost two decades. She is the author of eight previous works of non-fiction, including biographies of Pontius Pilate (shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Award and the W.H. Smith Award), Perkin Warbeck, Shelley, Orpheus (winner of the Criticos Prize) and St Francis. She lives in Brighton and London.

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