y separately published work icon The Conversation newspaper issue  
Issue Details: First known date: 2017... 18 April 2017 of The Conversation est. 2011 The Conversation
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* Contents derived from the , 2017 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Unflinching, Luminous, and Moving, the Stella Shortlist Will Get under Your Skin, Camilla Nelson , single work essay

'There are certain books that have the knack of getting under your skin. This is why George Bernard Shaw declared Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit to be a far more “seditious” text than Karl Marx’s Das Capital.

'What he was getting at is the power of books to work on your emotions. The intellect can be too cold an instrument to engender empathy, to bring people who are distant from you into your “circle of concern”. And it is precisely this, as philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues, that matters for the pursuit of social justice.

'In 2017, the Stella Prize judges have again come up with a shortlist of books that will engage your brain, but also your heart. They illuminate all the aspects of life that make us frail and vulnerable – sickness, dying, inequality – realities that many of us would prefer to ignore.' (Introduction)

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