The Colour of Memory
'In the race to be first in describing the lost generation of the 1980s, Geoff Dyer in The Colour of Memory leads past the winning post. 'We're not lost,' one of his hero's friend's says, 'we're virtually extinct'. It is a small world in Brixton that Dyer commemorates, of council flat and instant wasteland, of living on the dole and the scrounge, of mugging, which is merely begging by force, and of listening to Callas and Coltrane. It is the nostalgia of the DHSS Bohemians, the children of unsocial security, in an urban landscape of debris and wreckage. Not since Colin MacInnes's City of Spades and Absolute Beginners thirty years ago has a novel stuck a flick-knife so accurately into the young and marginal city. A low-keyed style and laconic wit touch up The Colour of Memory.' The Times
Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room
A Huffington Post Best Book of the Year There is no other writer at work today like the award-winning Geoff Dyer. Here he embarks on an investigation into Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, the masterpiece of cinema that has haunted him since he first saw it thirty years ago.
The Last Days of Roger Federer
One of Esquire's best books of spring 2022 An extended meditation on late style and last works from 'one of our greatest living critics' (Kathryn Schulz, New York). How and when do artists and athletes know that their careers are coming to an end? What if the end comes early in a writer's life? How to keep going even as the ability to do so diminishes? In this ingeniously structured investigation, Geoff Dyer sets his own encounter with late middle age against the last days and last works of writers, painters, musicians, and sports stars who've mattered to him throughout his life. With playful charm and penetrating intelligence, he considers Friedrich Nietzsche's breakdown in Turin, Bob Dylan's reinventions of old songs, J.M.W. Turner's proto-abstract paintings of blazing light, Jean Rhys's late-life resurgence, and John Coltrane's final works. Ranging from Burning Man to Beethoven, from Eve Babitz to William Basinski, and from Annie Dillard to Giorgio de Chirico, Dyer's study of last
Ongoing Moment
Great photographs change the way we see the world. The Ongoing Moment changes the way we look at both. With characteristic perversity and trademark originality, The Ongoing Moment is Dyer's unique and idiosyncratic history of photography. Seeking ...
But Beautiful
Lester Young fading away in a hotel room; Charles Mingus storming down the streets of New York on a too-small bicycle; Thelonius Monk creating his own private language on the piano... In eight poetically charged vignettes, Geoff Dyer skilfully evo...
Anglo-English Attitudes
Anglo-English Attitudes brings together Geoff Dyer's best journalism and other writing from 1984-99. There are studied meditations on photographers (Robert Capa, William Gedney, Cartier-Bresson), painters (Bonnard, Gauguin), musicians (Coltrane, N...
Paris Trance
In Paris, two couples form an intimacy that will change their lives forever. As they discover the clubs and cafés of the eleventh arrondissement, the four become inseparable, united by deeply held convictions about dating strategies, tunnelling in...
Another Great Day at Sea
In November 2011, Geoff Dyer fulfilled a childhood dream of spending time on an aircraft carrier. Dyer's stay on the USS George Bush, on active service in the Arabian Gulf, proved even more intense, memorable, and frequently hilarious, than he cou...
Working the Room
Alive with insight, wit and Dyer's characteristic irreverence, this collection of essays offers a guide around the cultural maze, mapping a route through the worlds of literature, art, photography and music. Besides exploring what it is that makes...
White Sands
SHORTLISTED FOR STANFORD DOLMAN TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR From a trip to The Lightning Field in New Mexico, to chasing Gauguin's ghost in French Polynesia, White Sands is a creative exploration of why we travel. Episodic, wide-ranging and funny, Geo...
Missing of the Somme
The Missing of the Somme has become a classic meditation upon war and remembrance. It weaves a network of myth and memory, photos and films, poetry and sculptures, graveyards and ceremonies that illuminate our understanding of, and relationship to...
Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It
From Amsterdam to Cambodia, from Rome to Indonesia, from New Orleans to Libya, and from Detroit to Ko Pha-Ngan, Geoff Dyer finds himself both floundering about in a sea of grievances and finding moments of transcendental calm. This aberrant quest ...
See/Saw
'Wide-ranging and eclectic' TLS 'Seductively curious' Observer 'A visual and intellectual journey' Herald See/Saw is an illuminating history of how photographs frame and change our perspectives. Starting from single images by the world's most impo...
Last Days of Roger Federer
A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK In this endlessly stimulating investigation into 'things coming to an end, artists' last works, time running out', Geoff Dyer sets his own encounter with late middle age against the last days and last achievements of...
Out of Sheer Rage
Sitting down to write a book about his hero D.H. Lawrence, Geoff Dyer finds himself compelled to write about anything else. He is in fact compelled to do more or less anything else instead of write. In Sicily he is too preoccupied by his hatred of...
Zona
In this spellbinding book, the man described by the Daily Telegraph as 'possibly the best living writer in Britain' takes on his biggest challenge yet: unlocking the film that has obsessed him all his adult life. Like the film Stalker itself, it c...
Homework: A Memoir
Named a most anticipated book of 2025 by Vulture The Guardian Financial Times The Observer The Times (London) Literary Hub 'A picture of postwar England unlike any other . . . A highly original memoir that will provoke, amuse, beguile--and endure.' --Antony Quinn, Financial Times 'Homework is wonderful Geoff-Dyer writing, which we've all learned to crave; something to delight and to move us and to edify us on every page. I find him an irresistible writer.' --Richard Ford A portrait of a young boy, who keeps passing exams--and of a changing England in the 1960s and 1970s. The only child of a sheet-metal worker and a dinner lady who worked at the canteen of the local school, Geoff Dyer grew up in a world shaped by memories of the Depression and the Second World War. But far from being a story of hardship overcome, this loving memoir is a celebration of opportunities afforded by the postwar settlement, of which the author was an unconscious beneficiary. The crux comes at the age of
Paris Trance: A Romance
People talk about love at first sight, about the way that men and women fall for each other immediately, but there is also such a thing as friendship at first sight. Luke moves to Paris with the idea of writing a novel but things get in the way. He becomes friends with a fellow expatriate, Alex; then he falls in love with Nicole. Alex meets Sahra, and the two couples form an intimacy that changes their lives. As they discover the clubs and caf s of the eleventh arrondissement, the four become inseparable, united by deeply held convictions about dating strategies, tunneling in P.O.W. films, and, crucially, the role of the Styrofoam cup in action movies. Experiencing the exhilarating highs of Ecstasy and sex, they reach a peak of rapture-the comedown from which is unexpected and devastating. In this book, Geoff Dyer fixes a dream of happiness-and its aftermath-with photographic precision. Boldly erotic and hauntingly elegiac, comic and romantic, Paris Trance confirms Dyer as one of
Homework
'Moving, atmospheric, truthful, perceptive and hilariously funny - I loved it: a piece of our English history, the story of a vanished time, which feels close at hand but thoroughly gone. What a story. What a great story' TESSA HADLEYIn Homework, Geoff Dyer reflects on his childhood and what it means to come of age in England in the 60s and 70s, in a country shaped by the aftermath of the Second World War but accelerating towards change.He was born in Cheltenham in the late fifties, the only child of a dinner lady and a planning engineer. Raised in a working-class area, Geoff and his mates found much joy recreating battles with their beloved Tommy guns, kicking a beachball around until its untimely death, and collecting anything and everything they could find; football cards, conkers and Action Man figures. When Geoff passes his 11-plus exams he gets in to a Cheltenham Grammar School, a school which drastically changes the trajectory of his life.
See/Saw
A full-colour illuminated history of how photographs frame and change the world, from the award-winning author of The Ongoing Moment
Search
Walker is at a party where he meets Rachel. Two days later she turns up at his apartment. However, it's not Walker she wants but her husband Malory, who has gone missing. She asks Walker to find him. So begins this strange, beautiful, road-movie o...
'Broadsword Calling Danny Boy'
A Telegraph, Evening Standard and Daily Mail Book of the Year From the acclaimed writer and critic Geoff Dyer, an extremely funny scene-by-scene analysis of Where Eagles Dare - published as the film reaches its 50th anniversary A thrilling Alpine ...
Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi
Jeff Atman, a journalist, is in Venice to cover the opening of the Biennale. He's expecting to see a load of art, go to a lot of parties and drink too many bellinis. He's not expecting to meet the spellbinding Laura, who will completely transform ...
