Synopsis
John Berger relates the story of “G.,” a young man forging an energetic sexual career in Europe during the early years of the twentieth century. With profound compassion, Berger explores the hearts and minds of both men and women, and what happens during sex, to reveal the conditions of the Don Juan’s success: his essential loneliness, the quiet cumulation in each of his sexual experiences of all of those that precede it, the tenderness that infuses even the briefest of his encounters, and the way women experience their own extraordinariness through their moments with him. All of this Berger sets against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi and the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1889, the Boer War, and the first flight across the Alps.

The first work of fiction published for seven years by this author, this book consists of a number of inter-related love stories unified by the same setting in France. Berger's previous publications include "The Success and Failure of Picasso" and the 1972 Booker Prize winner, "G".

遙跨三百年時空 隔代唱和之作
當伯格化身斯賓諾莎
英國全才藝評巨匠 ── 約翰‧伯格
爐火純青奇想傑作
圖文雙重奏 素描沉思錄
「我們畫畫的人，不僅想創作一些看得見的東西讓別人觀察，也希望能附帶一些看不見的東西，陪著它走向無法預料的終點。素描是一種探索的形式。而人類最初之所以產生素描的衝動，是因為人類需要尋找、需要測定位置、需要安置事物、需要安置自己。」── 約翰‧伯格
班托（Bento）是十七世紀哲學家斯賓諾莎的小名。斯賓諾莎極度迷戀光學，亦喜作畫，據說他當年曾隨身攜帶一本素描簿，畫下眼前所見事物。但在他離世後所保留的書信、手稿、筆記中，卻遍尋不著傳說的素描簿。持續關注繪畫的伯格，多年來始終對這本畫冊充滿好奇，經常想像其中繪寫之物，欲以斯賓諾莎之眼觀凝物事，重探斯人話語及其令人驚嘆的哲學命題。
有一回，伯格因緣際會得到一本無主素描簿，他認為，那就是「班托的素描簿」！靈光大發的伯格，攤開畫冊走筆塗抹，臆想並仿繪當年哲學家可能創作的篇章。在以目光觀視提問的交流動作中，伯格化心入神，蛻成班托替身，再現想像擬仿藝術的神奇瞬間。
全書收錄六十餘幅伯格素描，往復穿插斯賓諾莎《知性改進論》及《倫理學》兩書中的摘錄片段，呼應內文圖像。文字提挈了作者落筆時的心念意圖與沉思軌跡，精妙展示藝術引導人們凝視世界的無限可能。伯格親身示範，將以往有關注視、藝術、美學方面之觀念再度整合鋪引，精采呈現於此書，成就這部高貴心靈隔空唱和的創意之作。
各界好評
- 伯格有著洞悉人性且獨一無二的傾訴之聲，這聲音與他的素描技巧共振迴盪，締造這本凝鍊之書。這項稟賦與斯賓諾莎如謎般難解的哲學命題兩相結合，建構了一次卓越非凡的見證行動。── 《紐約時報》Teju Cole
- 如電擊般令人震驚的思想和能量……在年歲與脾性的洗鍊下，伯格以益發沉穩的文字和圖像，對今日的全球災難與日常生活，提出振奮人心且堅定不移的敘述。── 《新政治家》Colin MacCabe
- 本書再現了他的註冊商標：如詩一般精準。── 《蘇格蘭人》Meaghan Delahunt

'We live within a spectacle of empty clothes and unworn masks'
In this series of remarkable pieces from across his career, John Berger celebrates and dissects the close links between art and society and the individual. Few writers give a more vivid and moving sense of how we make art and how art makes us.
One of twenty new books in the bestselling Penguin Great Ideas series. This new selection showcases a diverse list of thinkers who have helped shape our world today, from anarchists to stoics, feminists to prophets, satirists to Zen Buddhists.

The electrifying effect the Zapatista peasant rebellion has had on leading figures in the intellectual, political, and literary world since the Zapatistas woke them up on New Year's Day, 1994, has provided inspiration for activists all over the world. A remarkable synergy has also developed between leading writers, novelists, and journalists and Subcomandante Marcos, the enigmatic, pipe-smoking and balaclavered leader of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, who seems like a character out of a "magical realism" novel. This reader includes a wide sampling of the best of the writing to emerge on the subject. The book is a journey through an insurgent and magical world of culture and politics, where celebrants and critics debate what Carlos Fuentes has described as the world's first ‘post-communist rebellion.' Included are essays by Paco Taibo II, Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, Elena Poniatowska, Ilan Stavans, Carlos Monsivais, Jorge Castenada, Jose Saramago, John Berger, Marc Cooper, Andrew Kopkind, Bill Weinberg, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alma Guillermoprieto and Eduardo Galeano.