Sontag, Susan

(US, 1933–2004)

Born in New York, Susan Sontag was best known for her essays on subjects as diverse as photography, illness, and pornography, and she also worked as a writer and director in theatre. Her novels and stories are often extensions of the ideas explored in her essays, but Sontag at her best wrote accessibly on intellectual themes. A good starting-point is The Volcano Lover (1992), a richly detailed historical romance based on the lives of the renowned eighteenth-century beauty, Emma Hamilton, and her husband William. The Benefactor (1963) explores the same period, following a young man named Hippolytus whose dream- and waking lives begin to merge and become confused during a Grand Tour of Europe. Death Kit (1967) is an imaginative reworking of themes and ideas drawn from the writings of Franz Kafka, and I, Etcetera (1978) is a collection of short stories.

John Berger, Franz Kafka, Simone de Beauvoir  WB