The Red Tenda of Bologna

"A contemporary masterpiece"—New York Review of Books A powerfully unsettling, mordantly witty story about the pitfalls of free will. In the course of a day, the ageing owner of an employment agency is propelled into a fantasy world through his romantic yearnings and inarticulate dreams, seeking an illusory freedom from the bonds of responsibility.

“Berger’s work is an invitation to reimagine; to see in different ways,” writes Tom Overton in the introduction to this volume. As a master storyteller and thinker John Berger challenges readers to rethink their every assumption about the role of creativity in our lives. In this brilliant collection of diverse pieces—essays, short stories, poems, translations—which spans a lifetime’s engagement with art, John Berger reveals how he came to his own unique way of seeing. He pays homage to the...