The Inky Digit of Defiance: Selected Prose 1966-2016; 1st/1st

In this richly varied selection of Tony Harrison’s provocative prose of the last fifty years, the great poet of page, stage, and screen presents a lifetime’s thinking about art and politics, creativity, and mortality. He takes us on an extraordinary journey through languages and across continents and millennia, from his Nigerian Lysistrata to the British Raj of his version of Racine’s Phèdre, to post-Communist Europe for the film Prometheus to a one-off performance of The Kaisers of Carnuntum at the Roman amphitheater between Vienna and Bratislava, to the peace camp at Greenham Common, and from a Leeds street bonfire celebrating the defeat of Japan by the new atomic bomb to wines made from the vines on volcanoes.

Recognized as Britain's leading theater and film poet, Tony Harrison has written extensively for the National Theatre, the New York Metropolitan Opera, the BBC, Channel 4, the RSC, and for unique ancient spaces in Greece, Austria and Japan. He has won numerous awards for his work. He was born in Leeds in 1937.