AUTHOR OF THE BOOKER-LONGLISTED NOVEL _SECOND PLACE_ A _GUARDIAN_ BOOK OF THE YEAR After the publication of _Outline_, _Transit_ and _Kudos_ - in which Rachel Cusk redrew the boundaries of fiction - this writer of uncommon brilliance returns with a series of essays that offers new insights on the themes at the heart of her life's work. Encompassing memoir and cultural and literary criticism, with pieces on gender, politics and writers such as D. H. Lawrence, Olivia Manning and Natalia Ginzburg, this collection is essential reading for our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, both startling and rewarding to behold. The result is a cumulative sense of how the frank, deeply intelligent sensibility - so evident in her stories and novels - reverberates in the wider context of Cusk's literary process. _Coventry_ grants its readers a rare opportunity to see a mind at work that will influence literature for time to come.