A Field Guide To Getting Lost

A Field Guide to Getting Lost is a provocative investigation into the nature of loss, losing and being lost. Starting from the revelation that what is totally unknown to you is usually what you most need to discover, this book explores how finding that unknown quantity frequently requires getting lost to begin with. Exquisitely written, this book manages to be both a heartfelt memoir, and a highly accomplished cultural study, with the bird’s eye perspective of one of the world’s most perceptive critics. Taking in subjects as eclectic as mapmaking and memory, Hitchcock and Renaissance painting, this book confronts the challenge of living with uncertainty.

Reviews of A Field Guide To Getting Lost

Nine short, brilliant essays – covers an amazing amount of ground. Go on. Start walking. Get lost. Who knows what you'll find. * Guardian * A wonderful book,which becomes (marvellously) lost in itself … her writing is so lucid and sympathetic, so interested in the world around her, that she never seems lost in her herself, or self-obsessed. * The Times * Rebecca Solnit is unquestionably one of the finest non-fiction writers of her generation. Possessed of eloquence and erudition in equal measure, her books have a wonderful capacity to lead the reader on unexpected and intriguing journeys … As with Solnit's previous books, there is an emotional, even a polemical dimension to these ideas. It is a rare writer who can write so excitingly with both heart and head. * Scotsman * The book itself is a kind of wandering, and it is hard to say where we get to, but there are good things along the way. * Sunday Times *