Reviews
"Nothing will get you thinking as much as this brilliant book." -George Walden, The Sunday Telegraph "This is a very important book, and, I believe, a great one which will in the future, if we have one, be read by wiser generations than ours." -Bryan Appleyard, Literary Review, Silence of Animals is a beautifully written book, the product of a strongly questioning mind. It is effectively an anthology with detailed commentary, setting out one rich and suggestive episode after another, each of which becomes only more suggestive by the juxtaposition., "Gray's godless mysticism asks us to look outside ourselves and simply see. This is a lot more difficult than it sounds . . . Sometimes I think John Gray is the great Schopenhauerian European Buddhist of our age. What he offers is a gloriously pessimistic cultural analysis, which rightly reduces to rubble the false idols of the cave of liberal humanism." -- Simon Critchley, The Los Angeles Review of Books "[Gray's is] a powerful message, and not without elements of profundity. And it is conveyed with eloquence of language and dignity of thought." -- Robert W. Merry, The National Interest "Gray's fans should find much here to please them. The range of literary, historical and philosophical extracts--from Conrad and Zweig to Borges and John Ashbery, and from Nietzsche and Freud to Robinson Jeffers and Czeslaw Milosz, to name only a few--is broad and deep. Gray's own utterances are by turns characteristically dark, audacious and outrageous." -- Caspar Henderson, The Telegraph " Silence of Animals is a beautifully written book, the product of a strongly questioning mind. It is effectively an anthology with detailed commentary, setting out one rich and suggestive episode after another, each of which becomes only more suggestive by the juxtaposition." -- Philip Hensher, The Spectator, Gray's fans should find much here to please them. The range of literary, historical and philosophical extracts--from Conrad and Zweig to Borges and John Ashbery, and from Nietzsche and Freud to Robinson Jeffers and Czeslaw Milosz, to name only a few--is broad and deep. Gray's own utterances are by turns characteristically dark, audacious and outrageous., "Gray's godless mysticism asks us to look outside ourselves and simply see. This is a lot more difficult than it sounds . . . Sometimes I think John Gray is the great Schopenhauerian European Buddhist of our age. What he offers is a gloriously pessimistic cultural analysis, which rightly reduces to rubble the false idols of the cave of liberal humanism." -Simon Critchley, The Los Angeles Review of Books "[Gray's is] a powerful message, and not without elements of profundity. And it is conveyed with eloquence of language and dignity of thought." -Robert W. Merry, The National Interest "Gray's fans should find much here to please them. The range of literary, historical and philosophical extracts-from Conrad and Zweig to Borges and John Ashbery, and from Nietzsche and Freud to Robinson Jeffers and Czeslaw Milosz, to name only a few-is broad and deep. Gray's own utterances are by turns characteristically dark, audacious and outrageous." -Caspar Henderson, The Telegraph " Silence of Animals is a beautifully written book, the product of a strongly questioning mind. It is effectively an anthology with detailed commentary, setting out one rich and suggestive episode after another, each of which becomes only more suggestive by the juxtaposition." -Philip Hensher, The Spectator, "Gray's godless mysticism asks us to look outside ourselves and simply see. This is a lot more difficult than it sounds . . . Sometimes I think John Gray is the great Schopenhauerian European Buddhist of our age. What he offers is a gloriously pessimistic cultural analysis, which rightly reduces to rubble the false idols of the cave of liberal humanism."-Simon Critchley, The Los Angeles Review of Books "Nothing will get you thinking as much as this brilliant book."-George Walden, The Sunday Telegraph "At once daunting and enthralling, Gray's remarkable new book shows us what it would be like to live without the distraction of consolations."-Adam Phillips "This is a very important book, and, I believe, a great one which will in the future, if we have one, be read by wiser generations than ours." -Bryan Appleyard, Literary Review "An absorbing book, full of challenging ideas you want to argue with." -Joan Bakewell, New Statesman "Extraordinary . . . Gray is undeniably a force to be reckoned with. He is the most lucid and compelling writer about political theory since Isaiah Berlin." -Johann Hari, The Independent "Remarkable . . . Straw Dogs is that rarest of things, a contemporary work of philosophy devoid of jargon, wholly accessible, and profoundly relevant to the rapidly evolving world we live in. Straw Dogs is a simple tool wielded effectively to devastating effect . . . After reading it you'll find that everything remains exactly the same-but appears very different. And that is disturbing." -Will Self, The Independent "[Gray] blends lyricism with wisdom, humour with admonition, nay-saying with affirmation, making in the process a marvellous statement of what it is to be both an animal and a human in the strange, terrifying and exquisite world into which we straw dogs find ourselves thrown."-John Banville, The Guardian "A work of modern philosophy that is no less readable and compelling for being rigorously bleak."- Publishers' Weekly , Gray's godless mysticism asks us to look outside ourselves and simply see. This is a lot more difficult than it sounds . . . Sometimes I think John Gray is the great Schopenhauerian European Buddhist of our age. What he offers is a gloriously pessimistic cultural analysis, which rightly reduces to rubble the false idols of the cave of liberal humanism., [Gray's is] a powerful message, and not without elements of profundity. And it is conveyed with eloquence of language and dignity of thought., "Gray's godless mysticism asks us to look outside ourselves and simply see. This is a lot more difficult than it sounds . . . Sometimes I think John Gray is the great Schopenhauerian European Buddhist of our age. What he offers is a gloriously pessimistic cultural analysis, which rightly reduces to rubble the false idols of the cave of liberal humanism."-Simon Critchley, The Los Angeles Review of Books "[Gray's is] a powerful message, and not without elements of profundity. And it is conveyed with eloquence of language and dignity of thought."-Robert W. Merry, The National Interest "Gray's fans should find much here to please them. The range of literary, historical and philosophical extracts-from Conrad and Zweig to Borges and John Ashbery, and from Nietzsche and Freud to Robinson Jeffers and Czeslaw Milosz, to name only a few-is broad and deep. Gray's own utterances are by turns characteristically dark, audacious and outrageous."-Caspar Henderson, The Telegraph " Silence of Animals is a beautifully written book, the product of a strongly questioning mind. It is effectively an anthology with detailed commentary, setting out one rich and suggestive episode after another, each of which becomes only more suggestive by the juxtaposition." Philip Hensher, The Spectator