“Google's motto is ‘Don't Be Evil,’ but is there something near to evil in writing itself? So suggests a superb essay here, ‘The Body of Evil,’ which brings together Hannah Arendt, JM Coetzee, and the aftermath of 9/11. ‘People using the term “evil” all sound the same,’ comments Rose, in a piece that shows off her discursively probing style to best effect... The rest of the collection sees a psychoanalytic reading of Peter Pan, an intriguing defence of Sylvia Plath's notorious poem ‘Daddy,’ and interesting interventions on Eliot-on-Hamlet, Virginia Woolf, Freud, Melanie Klein, and Israel-Palestine (with Amos Oz a key reference). The editors do a fine job of introducing the work.” — Steven Poole, The Guardian
“Rose brings courage, insight and compassion to every topic in this book, and gives the readers a taste of her uniquely feminine way of looking at the world: at injustice, identity, nationality, language, literature, and more through a psychoanalytic lens. A writer, literary critic, lecturer, and teacher, Rose’s oeuvre is impressively diverse.” — Michal Adiv-Ginach, American Journal of Psychoanalysis
“Jacqueline Rose, friend and ally, achieves what many of us attempt: to preserve the delicacy of a training in literary reading in the tough realities of the political. She made psychoanalysis possible for a whole generation. This book gives a sense of the range: analysis, text, war—from South Africa to Palestine.” — Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor, Columbia University
“Jacqueline Rose is one of our most trenchant, politically engaged intellectuals. It will be important for a wide range of readers to have this collection of her essays, along with the introduction—which will help readers unfamiliar with the full range of her work—and the splendid interview that concludes the volume.” — Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor, University of California, Berkeley