"Instant readability ... [Berger] makes one see [paintings] as statements or questions in a living language." -- New Statesman

"In contemporary letters John Berger seems to me peerless; not since Lawrence has there been a writer who offers such attentiveness to the sensual world with responsiveness to the imperatives of conscience."--Susan Sontag

In John Berger's powerful novel King, the Terrain is also home to a small community of the dispossessed. Here, a stone's throw from a highway somewhere in France, in shelters constructed out of detritus, live Jack and Marcello, old Corinna and Liberto, Joachim and Anna, and Danny and Saul. Here also live Vica and Vico, an elderly couple (and couples are a rarity among the homeless) and their dog, King. It is King who narrates this day-in-the-life narrative, and Berger has endowed him with the ability to understand and be understood: "Lying beside the chestnut brazier, something came to me between the ears: the world is so bad, God has to exist. I asked Vico what he thought. 'Most people,' he said quickly, 'would draw the opposite conclusion.'"

What makes King such a singular creation is that despite his philosophical bent and communicative skills, there is nothing anthropomorphic about him. He thinks, behaves, and reacts like a dog, albeit a dog who ponders the existence of the Almighty. Animals are not sentimental, and neither is Berger. His human characters are irrevocably damaged, their lives verge on the unbearable, and their attempts to create family and community at the edges of society are eventually thwarted. There can be no happy ending to this street story, but Berger is after something bigger than making his readers feel good. Instead he shines a spotlight on a world we would prefer to ignore, using the love that Vica, Vico, and King feel for each other to illuminate a humanity that is all too often overlooked. King is not an easy book to read, but it is impossible to forget. --Alix Wilber

"How can I describe Yes? Is it a love story? It's certainly romantic, but it is also quite definitely political. And it is also funny, though you couldn't really call it a comedy," says Sally Potter about the movie she began writing immediately following 9/11 as a response to the demonization of the Arab world in the West and the simultaneous wave of hatred against America. The story: She (Joan Allen) is an Irish-American scientist who is being strangled by her marriage to Anthony. She begins an affair with He (Simon Abkarian), a Lebanese surgeon exiled in London, who is working as a cook. Sam Neill plays Anthony, the betrayed and betraying politician husband, and Shirley Henderson is a philosophical cleaner who witnesses the trail of heartbreak the lovers leave behind them, as they embark on a personal journey through several countries—from London and Belfast to Beirut and Havana—which forces them to evaluate their beliefs and each other. To have her characters better express ideas which might be abstract or hard to digest, Potter chose to write their dialogue in verse, though such is the narrative drive and the strength of the performances that for much of the time this seems like just a more lyrical version of everyday speech. She says of her choice: "I read somewhere that in times of war the sales of poetry books go up. It's as though we need to use our most clear and rich tool, which is the tool of language, to express the subtleties and the nuances of our experience. And I think that verse is a kind of structure that allows us to explore language in a more interesting, more heightened way, than we tend to in everyday conversation." In addition to the complete screenplay and filmmaker's notes, the book includes essays written exclusively for this edition by the acclaimed, literary figures John Berger and Pankaj Mishra. 20 color photos.

Rethink, a de.MO project, is a book about history and politics, a book about our lives and about our world and what we are trying to accomplish in it. Rethink confronts our diversity, our stupidity and cleverness, our preoccupations and rage, our laughter and desperate tears, our need for justice and love, our thirst for blood and power, our need to nourish and be nourished, our need to breathe, close our eyes and dream.

The contributors to Rethink had the freedom to create their own voices and were encouraged to respond in a manner that would acknowledge the historical events and causes that brought us to September 11. Their varied responses create a document of great interest at a time when politics and values are in tremendous flux.

In Rethink, we are forced to be open-minded, to review all opinions and issues with the possibility that we might emerge with a new perspective and personal ideology.

Contributors include: Jon Lee Anderson, Kofi Annan, John Berger, Alexandra Boulat, Zbigniew Brzezinski, George W. Bush, Noam Chomsky, Wesley Clark, John Cooley, The Dalai Lama, Robert Fisk, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, Thomas L. Friedman, Gunter Grass, Ron Haviv, Christopher Hitchens, Michael Ignatieff, Muzamil Jaleel, Gary Knight, Antonin Kratochvil, Lewis H. Lapham, Matt McAllester, Takis Michas, Christopher Morris, James Nachtwey, Joseph S. Nye, David Rieff, Arundhati Roy, Edward Said, Eyad Sarraj, Uri Savir, Jonathan Schell, William Schultz, Susan Sontag and Admiral Stansfield Turner

Rethink has received the Photo District News Best Book Selection and the Communication Arts Best Book Selection.