Unsayable by Michael Cunningham - ISBN: 9780008836399
Paperback
A writer’s life exploring the beautiful impossibility of words.
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Unsayable

RRP$29.98

$23.99

  • Paperback

    304 pages

  • Release Date

    28 July 2026

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Summary

An intimate memoir portraying a life spent trying to describe the indescribable—from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist of The Hours and Day.

Go ahead. Try using language to slit the skin of mortality to see what’s on the other side.

At the age of three, Michael Cunningham began obsessively collecting the names of things: oak, Chevrolet, finch, tulip, Tupperware… Each word rendered the world ever so slightly more understandable, mor…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9780008836399
ISBN-10:0008836396
Author:Michael Cunningham
Publisher:HarperCollins Publishers
Imprint:Fourth Estate Ltd
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:304
Release Date:28 July 2026
Weight:270g
Dimensions:21mm x 135mm x 216mm
A-Format
B-Format
Unsayable by Michael Cunningham - ISBN: 9780008836399
135 × 216 mm
C-Format
A4
mm / in
What They're Saying

Critics Review

‘Such a generous book, essential for anyone wanting to relearn the arts of curiosity and devotion’ MIRANDA JULY
‘What a shimmering memory lane we readers get to walk down in this book, led by one of the most enchanting stylists of our time. Any moment we stretch a mind’s hand out, our fingertips meet the weightless touch of a hummingbird. Is that hummingbird Michael Cunningham’s memory or our own? It doesn’t matter. The joy is for everyone who reads with memory and imagination’ YIYUN LI
‘A luminous meditation on writing and on life, and how the two entwine, Unsayable is a memoir like no other, from one of the great writers of our times’ TASH AW
‘From one of our great living masters comes a book about making sense of a life through writing. In true Cunningham fashion, it is also a book about time; how time’s passage shapes our understanding of ourselves, our desires and our capacity to articulate our experiences. I read this book in a single, astonished sitting. There are insights, and anecdotes, contained in Unsayable that I will treasure and return to for the rest of my life’ JORDAN TANAHILL

About The Author

Michael Cunningham

Michael Cunningham is the author of six novels, including:

  • A Home at the End of the World
  • Flesh and Blood
  • The Hours (winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize)
  • Specimen Days
  • By Nightfall

He is also the author of Land’s End: A Walk in Provincetown. His most recent novel is The Snow Queen. He lives in New York.

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