The Greatest Books

Joan Didion

Nationality

American

Description

Joan Didion (; born December 5, 1934) is an American journalist and writer of novels, screenplays, and autobiographical works. Didion is best known for her literary journalism and memoirs. In her novels and essays, Didion explores the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos; the overriding theme of her work is individual and social fragmentation.At the peak of Didion's career, her writing was recognized for its significance in defining and observing American subcultures for mainstream audiences. In 1968, The New York Times referred to her early work as containing "grace, sophistication, nuance, [and] irony." In 2005, she won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Biography/Autobiography for The Year of Magical Thinking. She later adapted the book into a play, which premiered on Broadway in 2007.
In 2017, Didion was profiled in the Netflix documentary The Center Will Not Hold, directed by her nephew Griffin Dunne.

Wikipedia

Link

Gender

Female

The best books of all time by Joan Didion

  1. 94 . Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

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    This collection of essays takes the reader on a psychological tour of the intense, wayward, violent, not a little crazy America of the 1960s. Surfers, students, deadheads and druggies; Joan Baez, D...

    - Google

  2. 96 . The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

    Image of The Year of Magical Thinking

    The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion, is an account of the year following the death of the author's husband John Gregory Dunne (1932–2003). Published by Knopf in October 2005, the book was ...

  3. 591 . We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction by Joan Didion

    Image of We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction

    A definitive compilation of essays and nonfiction writings spanning more than forty years includes the author's reflections on politics, lifestyle, place, and cultural figures, including her studie...

    - Google

  4. 594 . Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion

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    Didion's mordant lucidity is like L.A. sunlight, a thing so bright sometimes it hurts. She's a descendant of the old California, the great- great-granddaughter of pioneers. But she was also schoole...

    - Time

  5. 1280 . Democracy by Joan Didion

    Image of Democracy

    Democracy -- Joan Didion's fourth novel -- was published in 1984. Set in Hawaii and Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam War, the book tells the story of Inez Victor, wife of U.S. Senator and o...

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