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Character Breakdown
Character Breakdown
Oct 7, 2024 6:28 AM

Author:Zawe Ashton

Character Breakdown

'Entertaining...revealing, shocking' BERNARDINE EVARISTO

'Sublime' CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS

Actor and director Zawe Ashton brings us a unique look at life, work and the absurdities of today's world

Zawe Ashton has been acting since she was six. She has played many different roles, from 'cute little girl' to 'assassin with attitude', Oscar Wilde's Salome to St Trinian's schoolgirl by way of Fresh Meat's Vod.

In Character Breakdown, Zawe scrolls through a version of her life. Or is it a version of her art? Or something in between. In it, she encounters glamour, horror, absurdity and questions like: is a life spent more on performance than reality any life at all?

'Smart, funny, vivid, honest, dark, timely' The Times

'A smart, funny and well-written take-down of modern showbiz' Elizabeth Day, author of How To Fail

Selected by Bernardine Evaristo as one her 20 books by Black British Womxn Writers

Reviews

A very great book

—— Lena Dunham

A smart, funny and well-written take-down of modern showbiz

—— Elizabeth Day , Mail on Sunday

Smart, funny, vivid, honest, dark, timely

—— The Times

An entertaining and original memoir touching on career, life and identity. It is an enjoyable read, despite the humiliating tales of auditions or filming situations where she is physically assessed, objectified or subject to casual racism. Understandably there is an undertone of rage in her keen observations

—— Hannah Beckerman , Observer

Character Breakdown embraces darkness while also being a wickedly absurd look at modern show business

—— Stylist

A meditation on womanhood, failure and performance…her experiences and conflicts feel universal…it is very funny

—— Sarah Carson , i

Sees the hotshot actress/writer/director who you might remember as mentalist Vod in student sitcom, Fresh Meat, look at the absurdity of pretending to be other people for a living

—— Muddy Stilettos

An extremely imaginative and well-written volume that has the pace and page-turning attractions of a novel… a fine, painfully honest autobiographer/ novelist… [and] a good, witty read but which also gives purchasers a real insight into life in the acting profession today

—— British Theatre Guide

I loved it...smart, funny, highly original and with an unconventional narrative that asked deep questions about the roles we all play in our lives

—— Elizabeth Day , Country & Town

A fascinating look at the fine line between performance and life, written with style

—— i magazine, *Summer Reads of 2019*

Entertaining... Funny, revealing, shocking and inventively structured

—— Bernadine Evaristo , Observer, *Books of the Year*

This sumptuous-looking illustrated tribute to the late, great musician and singer tells the official story of Prince's life, through his own words and personal effects.

—— The Bookseller

Prince’s voice comes through loud and clear; his personality, joie de vivre and single-mindedness jumping off the page throughout.'

—— Classic Pop Magazine

A beautifully crafted objet d’art

—— Hot Press

Prince's posthumous memoir conceals as much as it reveals, but remains a beautiful and strange book.

—— The Quietus

Worth every penny.

—— Daily Mirror

This is a beautiful book and a must-have for Prince completists

—— Daily Express

A ghostly memoir of a pop legend

—— i

The Beautiful Ones is not a traditional memoir of the trailblazer, more a collage of stories, notes, and pictures, […] a fascinating document.

—— Irish Examiner

Prince’s deeply personal memoir, that includes never-seen photos, scrapbooks and lyric sheets. It’s a must for all fans.

—— Choice Magazine

Other books will surely dig deeper into the life and the music, but his glows with a special allure, gilded as it is by the touch of the creator himself.

—— Q Magazine

If you adored the amazing performer […] then you should get your hands on this amazing memoir, written by the artist himself in The Beautiful Ones. Prince provides incredible anecdotes about his meteoric rise to stardom, sharing photos and memorabilia that have never been seen before.

—— Essential Marbella Magazine

Beautifully constructed, clear-eyed and generous-spirited.

—— Will Atkins, author of THE MOOR and THE IMMEASURABLE WORLD

Stories endure in this compelling debut.

—— Wanderlust

A noble quest to understand the dazzling respect for music embedded in Russian culture.

—— Country Life

An intoxicating journey into the wilds of Siberia.

—— Stella magazine

An account of dogged journeys through Siberia from the Urals to the Sea of Okhotsk... Roberts's pages sing like a symphony.

—— Spectator Books of the Year

Abdurraqib, known for his playful, intelligent sense of humor on Twitter, highlights amazing performances that shed light on societal constructions and moments of sheer joy his book about Black culture in America. Writing about joy is challenging; falling back on cliche is a constant temptation that Abdurraqib avoids in this insightful tome

—— Forbes

That sense of limitlessness wraps itself around every essay in Abdurraqib's newest book, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance. In it, he writes about Black performance in America-from Great Depression-era dance marathons to the enduring cool of Don Cornelius to the art of Mike Tyson entering a boxing ring-with both great reverence and rigorous analysis. The book, in the way Abdurraqib's work so often does, erects monuments to our should-be legends and our unignorable icons alike, and paints an expansive, deeply felt portrait of the history of Black artistry

—— Leah Johnson , Electric Literature

This deft consideration of seemingly irreconcilable values, between the personal and private dimensions of performance, can be found throughout the essays in A Little Devil in America...Abdurraqib sees performance as a site of radical questioning, experimentation, and dream-making. This book is not a work of theory. It is sensual. We watch him watching his idols and we watch him dancing along with them, sometimes clumsily. If Brooks's goal is to make a case for performers' intellectualism, Abdurraqib's is to help us understand how they teach us to live richer, more embodied lives

—— Danielle A. Jackson , Vulture

Engrossing and moving ... A new, poetic take on essays that, I think, changes the game in many ways.

—— Roger Robinson , New Statesman Books of the Year

Astonishing, impressive ... the connections he makes point to the enduring influence of Black art ... a book as bold as it is essential

—— TIME Book of the Year

Abdurraqib writes with uninhibited curiosity and insight about music and its ties to culture and memory, life and death, on levels personal, political, and universal.

—— Booklist (starred)

A towering work full of insightful observations about everything from the legacy of Nina Simone to the music of Bruce Springsteen... a powerful work about art, society, and the perspective through which its author regards both.

—— Electric Literature

A joyful requiem - emphasis on joyful. Abdurraqib has written a guide for the living as well as a memorial for those we have lost.

—— Los Angeles Review of Books

As powerful and touching as anything I've read this year, and Abdurraqib has emerged as the Ta-Nehisi Coates of popular culture.

—— James Mann , The Big Takeover
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