Super-Infinite

Katherine Rundell is a Fellow of All Souls College Oxford where she works on Renaissance literature. Her bestselling books for children have been translated into more than thirty languages and have won multiple awards. Rundell is also the author of a book for adults <i>Why You Should Read Children's Books Even Though You Are So Old and Wise</i>. She has written for among others the <i>London Review of Books</i> the <i>Times Literary Supplement</i> the<i> New York Review of Books</i> and the <i>New York Times</i> largely about books though sometimes about animals night climbing and tightrope walking. <b><font size=+1> **A <i>Sunday Times</i> top ten bestseller**</font></b><br><b><font size=+1></b><b>**Shortlisted for the <i>Sunday Times</i> Young Writer of the Year Award 2023**</b><b></font></b><br><b><font size=+1></b><b>**Shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize for Non-Fiction 2023**</b><b></font></b><br><b><font size=+1></b><b>**Shortlisted for the Slightly Foxed First Biography Prize 2023**</b><b></font></b><b></b><br><b></b><br><b>'Masterly.' <i>Observer</i></b><br><b>'Wonderful joyous.' Maggie O'Farrell</b><br><b>'Frankly brilliant.' <i>Sunday Times</i></b><br><b>'Unmissable.' Simon Jenkins</b><br><b>'Every page sparkles.' Claire Tomalin</b><br><b>'A triumph.' Matt Haig</b><br><b>'Stylish scholarly and gripping.' Rose Tremain</b><br><br>John Donne lived myriad lives. Sometime religious outsider and social disaster sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling Donne was incapable of being just one thing.<br><br>He was a scholar of law a sea adventurer an MP a priest the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral - and perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language.<br><br>In <i>Super-Infinite</i> Katherine Rundell shows us the many sides of Donne's extraordinary life his obsessions his blazing words and his tempestuous Elizabethan times - unveiling Donne as the most remarkable mind and as a lesson in living. <b>Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2022 now in paperback: a sparkling and very modern biography of John Donne: the poet of love sex and death.</b> Fascinating and incisive: spellbinding. <b>A wonderful joyous piece of work . . . with fierce interrogative intelligence</b>. it is fantastic to have this most elusive and mysterious of men brought out into the light for all to see. <b>I just loved it.</b> <b>Frankly brilliant </b>. . . On reading this extraordinary biography you are left concluding that [Rundell's] talent like that of her hero's must somehow be super-infinite. Rundell captures John Donne's unique vision in all its power eloquence and strangeness . . . she is <b>the ideal person to evangelise him for our age. </b> Katherine Rundell's brave and detailed new biography of John Donne is just the book we need: the life family historical background religious questions and - best of all - the poetry are imaginatively researched and subtly treated. The result is worthy of its subject - <b>every page sparkles. </b> What a <i>Super-Infinite </i>delight is this<b> this is the rich textured and excellent biography that I have always wanted to read about Donne</b> - it brings the poet his poetry his many lives and his turbulent Elizabethan and Stuarts times vividly to life. Katherine Rundell makes Donne come alive as a remarkable and extraordinary and almost boundless human being. His life was one of despair and joy the sacred and the profane deep love and pain and <b>this book is filled with such infectious passion and fascinating detail</b> that it shines like its subject. <b>A triumph.</b> <b>Crackling with gusto and sympathetic intelligence</b> <i>Super-infinite</i> places John Donne fairly and squarely in his own times while making those times feel contiguous with our own. We meet all his closely-entangled selves - wit poet lover husband soldier priest - and all of them are cleverly drawn creating a portrait in which closely-observed details are ingeniously set against a background of long perspectives. 'Katherine Rundell has a wonderful touch light yet profound which perfectly suits her extraordinary subject. The book combines delight in Donne's humanity and his intellect even as it delves into his metaphysics. <b>Unmissable</b>.' This book unravels that knotty witty passionate poet John Donne. Completely at home in the middle of this Sacred and Profane Love Machine Katherine Rundell has produced what is in itself <b>a paradoxical and beautifully crafted work of literature - something much greater than mere critical simple biography</b>. Super-Infinite is a stylish scholarly and gripping account of Donne's ecstatically divided self 'hurried by love' and by man's 'inborn sting': <b>a work super-relevant to our own troubled times</b>. <b>What a delightful book</b><i> Super-Infinite </i>is: companionable astute intimate in tone and clear-eyed in judgement<b> it brings Donne and his milieu to glorious life.</b> I loved it. <b>There can be no better companion than Rundell in a bracing pursuit of John Donne. </b>Throughout this sure-footed and eloquent biography she encourages us to listen attentively to his many voices and to the voices of those around him. <b>Anyone who has been lucky enough to read Rundell's books (time and again) to their children will be totally unsurprised by this [a] brilliant leap into literary history of a rather more adult flavour. </b>Her skill as a novelist shows us John Donne the man so real so eccentric fizzing with talent weird as hell; while her attention to detail makes her a historian of the first rank. It is among my proudest boasts that I was massive Rundell fan before she became a national treasure.