Дженни Диски – лучшие книги

När Jenny Diski får diagnosen lungcancer med "två till tre år kvar att leva" vet hon inte hur hon ska reagera. Som författare bestämmer hon sig för att skriva om livet med sjukdomen. Och om sin femtio år långa komplicerade vänskap med nobelpristagaren Doris Lessing. Det blir en sista resa från ett före till ett efter, den här gången enbart i det inre, det som hon ändå helst alltid återvänt till och hemma i den älskade soffan där hon alltid trivts bäst.
På sitt vanliga klara, bitska, krispiga vis börjar hon skriva om sitt liv med sjukdomen.
Berättelsen om de fyra stormiga åren då hon bodde hemma hos Doris Lessing och skildringen av deras långa vänskap därefter ger en bild av Doris Lessing som ingen annan hade kunnat ge och ett helt nytt läsesätt till Lessings böcker. De självbiografiska anteckningarna om Jennys egen uppväxt med en pappa som var solochvårare och en mamma med psykiska problem, om livet i swinging London, om barn och barnbarn (kanske det enda som gör det riktigt svårt att tänka på döden, att inte få se dem växa upp) allt kastar också ett nytt ljus över Diskis eget författarskap.
Pressröster om Den sista resan: "Ett osentimentalt vasst och ömsint bokslut över livet av en författare som var bra på att tänka och ännu bättre på att skriva om det hon tänkte på." Therese Eriksson, Svenska Dagbladet
"Om man inte har läst Diski innan är det hög tid att göra det nu" Katarina Wikars, Kulturnytt, P1
"En djupt trösterik bok och ett unikt porträtt av en av världens mest talangfulla författare, som sent kommer att falla i glömska." Lena S. Karlsson, Dala-Demokraten
"Diski är intellektuell utan att bli uteslutande, vass utan att bli elak, smart och rolig." Bella Stenberg, Göteborgs-Posten "Hon förtjänar vår oreserverade beundran, inte för sitt mod eller sin kamp eller något annat oväsentligt trams i den stilen, utan för att hon skriver så bra."
Andrew Brown i The Guardian
"Hur produktiv hon än varit, så är detta den historia som var den viktigaste för Diski att få berätta."
Blake Morrison i The Guardian
" den starkaste bekräftelse på sin existens och det mest omstörtande försvar en författare kan uppbringa mot sin egen utplåning."
Heidi Julavits i The New York Times
"Hennes bok påminner oss om den glädje, det sällskap och den näring det ligger i att bara tänka, särskilt om man gör det så väl som hon gör här."
Anne Enright i The Irish Times
Jenny Diski (1947-2016) var en återkommande skribent i flera olika tidningar, däribland svenska Göteborgsposten.
Fem av hennes böcker finns tidigare utgivna på Alfabeta: På tunn is (2004), Främling på tåg (2005), Den motvilliga resenären (2007), Till den skrivande kvinnans försvar (2011) och Allt jag inte vet om djur (2012).
Hon levde under många år, fram till sin död, tillsammans med författaren Ian Patterson, alltid kallad Poeten, så även i denna sista bok.

Subtle, intelligent and brilliantly observed, What I Don't Know About Animals is an engaging look at what it means to be human - and what it means to be animal.

Marie de Gournay was eighteen when she read, and was overwhelmed by, the essays of the French philosopher Montaigne. She had to be revived with hellebore. When she finally met Montaigne, she stabbed herself with a hairpin until the blood ran in order to show her devotion. He made her his adopted daughter for the two months they knew each other. He died four years later, after which, though scorned by intellectuals, she became his editor. Jenny Diski engages with this passionate and confused relationship between 'father and daughter', old writer/young acolyte, possible lovers, using both their voices. Much of their story is about absence of the people they love. In Jenny Diski's hands it becomes a fascinating tale.

Jenny Diski's attempt to keep still and mentally idle resulted in a year in which she travelled to New Zealand, spent two months almost alone in a cottage in the country and visited the Sámi people of Lapland. Montaigne was alarmed to discover that by staying still his mind 'bolted off like a runaway horse'; Diski, failing to keep still, finds much the same problem and like Montaigne keeps a record of her ramblings both mental and physical hoping as he did in time to make her mind ashamed of itself. Interspersed with ill-tempered descriptions of these trips are digressions on the subject of her sore foot; her childhood desire for 'a condition', thoughts about growing older, spiders, fundamentalism and the problems of keeping warm.

This strange and brilliant book recounts Jenny Diski's journey to Antarctica last year, intercut with another journey into her own heart and soul...a book of dazzling variety, which weaves disquisitions on indolence, truth, inconsistency, ambiguousness, the elephant seal, Shackleton, boredom and over and over again memory, into a sparse narrative, caustic observation and vivid description of the natural world. While Diski's writing is laconic, her images are haunting.'
Elspeth Barker, Independent on Sunday

Using two cross-country trips on Amtrak as her narrative vehicles, British writer Jenny Diski connects the humming rails, taking her into the heart of America with the track-like scars leading back to her own past. As in the highly acclaimed Skating to Antarctica, Diski has created a seamless and seemingly effortless amalgam of reflections and revelation in a unique combination of travelogue and memoir.

Novelist Jenny Diski examines the story of the life-long love of Abraham and Sarah (Genesis chapters 11 to 22) and recasts their story as the first love triangle - between a man, his wife and the voice of God.

The story of Nony, who is blind and dumb and who has nothing else to do but to tell the story of her remarkable mother, Frances. Through the symbiotic wisdom of mother and daughter and through the sharp and darkly humorous consciousness of Nony, the author reveals a new perspective on ourselves. Jenny Diski is the author of "Nothing Natural" and "Rainforest".

This is Jenny Diski at her essayistic best in a highly personal and entertaining exploration of the twentieth century's most colourful decade.

Many books have been written on the Sixties: tributes to music and fashion, sex, drugs and revolution. In The Sixties, Jenny Diski breaks the mould, wryly dismantling the big ideas that dominated the era – liberation, permissiveness and self-invention – to consider what she and her generation were really up to. Was it rude to refuse to have sex with someone? Did they take drugs to get by, or to see the world differently? How responsible were they for the self-interest and greed of the Eighties? With characteristic wit and verve, Diski takes an incisive look at the radical beliefs to which her generation subscribed, little realising they were often old ideas dressed up in new forms, sometimes patterned by BIBA. She considers whether she and her peers were as serious as they thought about changing the world, if the radical sixties were funded by the baby-boomers' parents, and if the big idea shaping the Sixties was that it really felt as if it meant something to be young.