Leaving The Twentieth Century

Praise

“Wark’s readable explanation of the movement’s ideas is the best I have read.”
—Edwin Heathcote, Financial Times

“A playful, smart and occasionally epigrammatic study of the Situationists … this brilliant account is not only an essential work for our own times; it also comes with a cover that, with the minimum of manual dexterity, folds out into a collaborative graphic essay”
—John Burnside, Times Literary Supplement

“They could be treated as histories of the Situationist milieu and its aftermaths, but to do so would miss entirely what makes them such compelling and, at times, hilarious reading. […] What really drives The Beach Beneath the Street and The Spectacle of Disintegration is their impatience with contemporary cultural and intellectual institutions that, for all of their posturing, are largely complicit with the prevailing political order”
—Sydney Review of Books

“Wark is a marvellous guide to the micro-society of the Situationists … She brings to the task a necessary sympathy, an encyclopedic knowledge, and a certain stylistic irrepressibility”
—Alex Danchev, Times Literary Supplement

“Wark is a fine aphorist … Playful, angry, depressed, celebratory, this is a book for anyone not convinced that there is no alternative to the way we live now”
—Christopher Bray, Observer

“[A] smart overview of the situationist movement”
—Hari Kunzru, New Statesman, Books of the Year

“Covering the SI’s adventures in philosophy, art, architecture, literature and cinema (and suggesting that we should do away with many of the distinctions between these categories), Wark traces a lineage we have apparently lost.. The author’s primary proposal is that although we live in serious times we should still have fun with time. We should treat history as a user’s manual. This history of the SI shifts with gay abandon between past, present and future tenses, and constantly rattles the boundaries”
—Art Review