The Din in the Head

One of America's foremost novelists and critics, Cynthia Ozick has won praise and provoked debate for taking on challenging literary, historical, and moral issues. In her spirited essay collection The Din in the Head, she focuses on the essential joys of great literature. With razor-sharp wit and an inspiring joie de vivre, Ozick investigates unexpected byways in the works of Leo Tolstoy, Saul Bellow, Helen Keller, Isaac Babel, Sylvia Plath, Susan Sontag, and Henry James, among others. Throughout this bracing collection, she celebrates the curative power of the literary imagination.

Cynthia Ozick is the author of numerous acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction. She is a recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Man Booker International Prize. Her stories have won four O. Henry first prizes and, in 2012, her novel ForeignBodies was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. She was born in 1928 and currently lives in New York.