Bookshelf
| can't find it |

| browse books |
books
 

| book details |

The Alienation Effect: How Central European Émigrés Transformed the British Twentieth Century

By (author) Owen Hatherley





This book is currently unavailable. Enquire to check if we can source a used copy


| book description |

Britain. Made in Europe. In the 1930s, tens of thousands of central Europeans sought sanctuary from fascism in Britain. While the rainy, seemingly quaint island they discovered on arrival was a far cry from the dynamism of Weimar Berlin or Red Vienna, it was safe, and it became home. Yet the émigrés had not arrived alone: they brought with them new and radical ideas, and as they began to rebuild their lives and livelihoods, they transformed the face of Britain forever. Drawing on an immense cast of artists and intellectuals, including celebrated figures like Erno Goldfinger, forgotten luminaries like Ruth Glass, and a host of larger-than-life visionaries and charlatans, the historian Owen Hatherley argues that in the resulting clash between European modernism and British moderation, our imaginations were fundamentally realigned and remade for the better. In casting what Bertolt Brecht called, in a new German word, a Verfremdungseffekt, an ‘alienation effect’, on Britain, the aliens made us all a little bit alien too. Provocative, entertaining and meticulously researched, The Alienation Effect opens our eyes to the influence of the émigrés all around us – many of our most quintessentially British icons are the product of this culture clash – and entreats us to remember and renew our proud national tradition of asylum.

| product details |



Normally shipped | Enquiries only
Publisher | Penguin Books Ltd
Published date | 27 Mar 2025
Language |
Format | Digital (delivered electronically)
Pages | 608
Dimensions | 0 x 0 x 0mm (L x W x H)
Weight | 0g
ISBN | 978-0-2413-7821-2
Readership Age |
BISAC |


| other options |


| your trolley |

To view the items in your trolley please sign in.

| sign in |

| specials |

The Memory Collectors: A Novel

Dete Meserve
Paperback / softback
320 pages
was: R 666.95
now: R 599.95
Forthcoming


Fifteen Dogs

André Alexis
Paperback / softback
176 pages
was: R 315.95
now: R 283.95
Available from overseas. Dispatched in aprox 4-8 weeks as local supplier is out of stock

A pack of dogs are granted the power of human thought - but what will it do to them? A surprising and insightful look at the beauty and perils of consciousness.

The Ballerina and the Bull: Anarchist Utopias in the Age of Finance

Johanna Isaacson
Paperback / softback
288 pages
was: R 332.95
now: R 299.95
This title will take longer to obtain, and should be delivered in 6-8 weeks

Our moment has seen the resurgence of an anarchist sensibility, from the uprisings in Seattle in 1999 to the Occupy movement of 2011.