{"product_id":"the-storyteller-tom-overton-9781804298442","title":"The Storyteller: John Berger's Lives","description":"\u003cb\u003eA magisterial biography of novelist and critic John Berger, whose work--including Ways of Seeing and the Booker-prize winning G.--revolutionized the critical tradition in the twentieth century\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Storyteller\u003c\/i\u003e began with conversations between the author and subject while Overton catalogued Berger's archive at the British Library. Overton then, naturally, drew in the perspectives of friends, family, and collaborators. But at the center of this research is a miracle that occurred after Berger's death: a Pompeii-like record of his life and work in the 1960s that was dragged out of the Genevan bomb shelter it had been locked in for fifty years. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eJohn Berger was born into Central European Judaism and the trauma of the first World War on one side of his family, and on the other, he inherited working-class radicalism and suffragism. Initiated into the British ruling class through boarding school and military service, he became a painter in the shadow of nuclear annihilation, then a novelist, critic, and broadcaster in Cold War London and later in the Alps, where his work as a truly European writer with a global audience flowered. Berger called himself a storyteller, and he worked by going in close to an experience and bringing something back. In Overton's words, half of this story of Berger's life \"is where the needs -- political, artistic, emotional--to be this storyteller came from\" and the other is \"what this sense of himself as a storyteller let him do.\" \u003ci\u003eThe Storyteller\u003c\/i\u003e examines the achievements and limits of Berger's ethics of collaboration, and the impact of his self-defined storytelling on figures as varied as Susan Sontag, Anne Michaels, Michael Ondaatje, Geoff Dyer, Arundhati Roy and the internationally renowned theater company Complicite . \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBerger's was a long life of short books that lastingly defined their subjects. The politics and technology of art in \u003ci\u003eWays of Seeing\u003c\/i\u003e. Migration to Europe in \u003ci\u003eA Seventh Man\u003c\/i\u003e. Humans, animals, and the earth in \u003ci\u003eInto Their Labours\u003c\/i\u003e. What it is to be a good doctor in \u003ci\u003eA Fortunate Man\u003c\/i\u003e. Tom Overton's \u003ci\u003eThe Storyteller\u003c\/i\u003e is a book that defines Berger, and it is a story to be continued by the reader.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Tom Overton\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1804298441\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781804298442\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Verso\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 09\/01\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 528\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.25lbs","brand":"Tom Overton","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":47244240158975,"sku":"9781804298442","price":34.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_7065d63f-fbb4-402c-a1a7-a4845277f8d6.jpg?v=1758135271","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-storyteller-tom-overton-9781804298442","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}