Yoga
  • Published: 24 October 2023
  • ISBN: 9781529114324
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $37.00

Yoga

From the bestselling author of THE ADVERSARY

Formats & editions
Paperback
24 Oct 2023
EBook
2 Jun 2022
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A powerful reckoning with mental illness and a search for truth and healing through the discipline of yoga, from one of the world's greatest living writers

This is a book about yoga. Or at least, it was.

January 2015. High on literary success and familial bliss, Emmanuel Carrère embarks on a rigorous ten-day meditative retreat in rural France in search of clarity and material for his next book, which he thinks will be a subtle, upbeat introduction to yoga.

But his trip is cut short, and he is brought down to earth with a thud when he returns to a Paris in turmoil in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack. From then on, Carrère's life - along with his novel-in-progress - begins to unravel in ever more unexpected ways.

'The story of how a life can fray, tighten itself into a noose, unravel... profound and moving' Geoff Dyer

'Extraordinarily compelling' Financial Times
  • Published: 24 October 2023
  • ISBN: 9781529114324
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $37.00
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About the author

Emmanuel Carrère

Emmanuel Carrère, novelist, filmmaker, journalist, and biographer, is the award-winning internationally renowned author of The Adversary (a Sunday Times bestseller and New York Times Notable Book, translated into twenty-three languages), Lives Other Than My Own, My Life as a Russian Novel, Class Trip, Limonov (winner of the 2011 Prix Renaudot), The Mustache and, most recently, The Kingdom.

portrait photo of Emmanuel Carrère

Also by Emmanuel Carrère

Class Trip
The Moustache
Other Lives But Mine
97,196 Words
The Adversary
Limonov
See all

Praise for Yoga

I loved Emmanuel Carrère's Yoga... A useful manual for this era, where nothing seems connected but everything's related.

Adam Thirlwell, Times Literary Supplement *Books of the Year*

Impressive... reveals itself as a monumental book on the human condition.

L'Obs

Stunning...Yoga is a deeply moving reflection on the painful occupation that is living.

Elle

How does one harmonise the yin and yang of a life broken in two? Yoga is the implacable tale of a writer lost in his kingdom.

L'Express

Unlike any book I've ever read... Carrère is anything but ordinary as a talent, but his great and precious gift is to reveal his own mind in such a way that illuminates the infinity that belongs to every human person.

Megan Nolan, author of ACTS OF DESPERATION

Yoga is the story of how a life can fray, tighten itself into a noose, unravel and, in the process, be built and braided into lines that make up a profound and moving work of art.

Geoff Dyer

Completely arresting. He [Carrère] has the talent...of showing us his foibles without demanding that we identify with them.

The Times

A devastating portrait...[Carrère's] singular, ever-expanding work, in which one pain need never obscure another, in which truths and half-truths are held not in opposition but in delicate, precarious balance, is an answer in itself.

Sam Byers, Guardian

[Carrère's] skill in constructing a narrative from disparate materials is exceptional... [and] relentlessly interesting.

Observer

[With] relentless clarity of thought and confessional honesty... Yoga is fascinating on the purpose of meditation... [an] extraordinarily compelling account.

Financial Times

An exhilarating new work of autofiction... It's wonderful. It is Carrère's willingness to face his own flaws full in the face that makes his writing so striking, and - dare I say it - relatable.

Cal Flyn, Literary Review

An immensely engaging, lively and exciting writer... [Yoga] is increasIngly hypnotic; lyrical, hypnotic and elegant. There is no doubt that a great intellect is at work, keen to explore the depths of his own troubled mind.

Big Issue

A tender, honest, intelligent portrait of the human condition.

Scotsman

Another book of bracing candour

White Review, *Books of the Year*