What does it mean to be a politically committed writer?

Through a close reading of the lives and works of some of the greatest intellectuals of recent times, Adam Shatz asks: do writers have an ethical imperative to question injustice? How can one remain a dispassionate thinker when involved in the cut and thrust of politics? And, in an age of horror and crisis, what does it mean to be a committed writer?

Shatz interrogates the major figures of twentieth and twenty-first century thought and finds within their lives and work the roots of our present intellectual and geopolitical situation. Charting the role of the committed intellectual through the work of Jean-Paul Sartre on the Algerian War and Edward Said's lifelong solidarity with the Palestinian people, to Fouad Ajami's role as the "native informant" for pro-intervention cause in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, alongside philosophers and critics Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and Claude Lévi-Strauss and the novelists Michel Houllebecq and Richard Wright, each struggled to reconcile their writing and their politics, their thought and their commitments. Writers and Missionaries is an erudite and incisive work of intellectual elucidation and biographical enquiry that demands that we interrogate anew the relation of thought and action in the struggle for a more just world.

"Reminiscent of an interview, Shatz sets up his opening question, sits back, and simply lets his subjects talk. At its heart [Writers and Missionaries] is an extended exercise in listening." - Oxford Review of Books

"The book is infused with life-to read it is almost an antidote to the cynicism that indeed does develop from too many book reviews obviously written as favors, or strategic plays on the part of the reviewer." - Los Angeles Review of Books

"Indispensable for anyone trying to think seriously about the ethical demands of writing and journalism against the backdrop of dark and even catastrophic times." - Jewish Currents

"These probing essays on writers and artists-such as Richard Wright, Edward Said, Jacques Derrida, and Kamel Daoud-reflect Adam Shatz's abiding interests: the intellectual life of the Francophone and the Arab worlds, leftist politics, and the nature of political art." - New Yorker

"A sustained and unflinching exploration of the role and formation of the intellectual in our society." - Sight & Sound

"Lucid and stimulating." - Irish Times

"A brilliant collection of political essays by one of our sharpest literary journalists." - Observer