The Colour Of Memory

The first novel, in revised form, from "possibly the best living writer in Britain" (The Daily Telegraph) In The Colour of Memory, six friends plot a nomadic course through their mid-twenties as they scratch out an existence in near-destitute conditions in 1980s South London. They while away their hours drinking cheap beer, landing jobs and quickly squandering them, smoking weed, dodging muggings, listening to Coltrane, finding and losing a facsimile of love, collecting unemployment, and discussing politics in the way of the besotted young—as if they were employed only by the lives they chose. In his vivid evocation of council flats and pubs, of a life lived in the teeth of romantic ideals, Geoff Dyer provides a shockingly relevant snapshot of a different Lost Generation.

'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

Born in 1867, French Postimpressionist artist Pierre Bonnard was, with Henri Matisse, one of the greatest colorists of the early 20th century. As a painter, he preferred to work from memory, using drawings as a reference to capture the spirit of a moment and express it through his distinctive handling of color and innovative sense of composition. This accessible and highly illustrated introduction to his life and work, published to accompany a major Tate exhibition, offers readers a special insight into the popular artist and his practice.

For one, green is associated with resurgence, revival and vitality. The title desired to capture this resurgence and vitality of memory shaped by the trauma of lived experience of growing up in Kashmir - one of the most militarized zones in the modern world. The poems strive to record the trauma and memory of trauma. As Kashmir slips gradually into a long inevitable decay and implosion, nothing of the security and aspiration it once stood for remains. Faced with the twin catastrophes of climate change due to unbridled urbanization, and relentless military occupation, the only resurgence in Kashmir is in chronicling grief, and lamenting the past. In the vast desert of red blood, and pale death poetry is the only patch of life.

What remains of the colours of our childhood? What are our memories of a blue rabbit, a red dress, a yellow bike – and were they really those colours? What colours do we associate with our student years, our first loves, our adult lives? How does colour leave its mark on memory? In an attempt to answer these and other questions, Michel Pastoureau presents us with a journal about colours that covers half a century. Drawing on personal recollections, he retraces the recent history of colours through an exploration of fashion and clothing, everyday objects and practices, emblems and flags, sport, literature, museums and art. This text – playful, poetic, nostalgic – records the life of both the author and his contemporaries. We live in a world increasingly bursting with colour, in which colour remains a focus for memory, a source of delight and, most of all, an invitation to dream.

The story that you have asked me to tell you does not begin with the pitiful ugliness of Lloyd’s death. It begins on a long-ago day in August when the sun seared my blistered face and I was nine years old and my father and mother sold me to a strange man. Memory, the narrator of Petina Gappah’s The Book of Memory, is an albino woman languishing in Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison in Harare, Zimbabwe, after being sentenced for murder. As part of her appeal, her lawyer insists that she write down what happened as she remembers it. The death penalty is a mandatory sentence for murder, and Memory is, both literally and metaphorically, writing for her life. As her story unfolds, Memory reveals that she has been tried and convicted for the murder of Lloyd Hendricks, her adopted father. But who was Lloyd Hendricks? Why does Memory feel no remorse for his death? And did everything happen exactly as she remembers? Moving between the townships of the poor and the suburbs of the rich, and between past and present, the 2009 Guardian First Book Award–winning writer Petina Gappah weaves a compelling tale of love, obsession, the relentlessness of fate, and the treachery of memory.

Steven Rose's The Making of Memory is about just that, in both its senses: the biological processes by which we humans - and other animals - learn and remember, and how researchers can explore these mechanisms. But it is also about much more. When the first edition of this fascinating book won the Science book Prize in 1993, the judges described it as 'a riveting read...a first-hand account by a practicing scientist working at the forefront of medical research and Rose does not duck the issues which that raises.' Now ten years on, research has itself moved forward, and Rose has taken the opportunity to fully revise the book. But this is more than mere revision. Where ten years ago he argued the case for research on memory because it is the most extraordinary of human attributes, Rose's own research has now opened the doors to a potential new treatment for Alzheimer's Disease undreamed of a decade ago, and in an entirely new chapter he describes how this potential breakthrough has occurred.

This book examines the character and relevance of remembrance, inviting readers to think creatively and deeply about the ways that memories are transmitted, recorded, and distorted through time and space. Ranging from molecular genetics and astrophysics to law and Indigenous oral histories, the essays draw from a diverse group of contributors to capture different perspectives on memory. Reflecting upon memory in engaging and unexpected ways, this collection offers an interdisciplinary roadmap for exploring how, why, and when we remember.