Nemesis, My Friend

Journeys through the Turning Times

This book of essays tracks the turning light of the day and seasons, an almanac of the turning times. Beginning in dawn and spring, it moves to noon and summer, then evening and autumn and finally night and winter. Set partly at the author's home in Wales, the book journeys more widely, searching for a dead father in Prague, listening to the Sky-Grandmothers of Mexican myth and staying with the people of West Papua who, when they know they will fall over laughing, lie down first.

It asks: what is the real gift of Nemesis and why is she so misjudged? Why should flowers be prescribed as medicine? What do male zebra finches dream of? Where do the sands of time run fastest, and how is that connected to the age of anxiety?

It explores the dawn chorus; the tradition of sacred hospitality; dust from the time before the sun even existed; the twilight time of the trickster and the daily rituals of morning. In all of these it asks: why does light, through the hours of the day and the seasons of the year, affect us? Because light is how we think.

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Reviews and Endorsements:​

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"The effect is intoxicating but this is no random rag-bag — taken as a whole, the book is an attempt to reinvest the idea of Nemesis with a new and liberating meaning...Jay Griffiths' works defy categorisation and fizz with original ideas and excitement. ...Griffiths' work is beautiful and tender, but it is also built on profound truths and hard-won experience" - John Mitchinson in Byline Times Zeitgeisters 'The Big Thinkers' 

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"Griffiths’ storytelling draws together wide-ranging cultural references to create an abundant folklore of our times. A rich tumbling of feeling, lyric and metaphor, Griffiths conjures a riot of words and ideas in response to the concurrent threats. Through a hybrid blend of travel, literature, culture and political analysis, Nemesis charts the author’s insights into our present situation and shares the same restless energy of her natural-political manifesto Why Rebel, but this time it is also deeply personal. This brave, angry, kind and wise book holds an extraordinary flourishing of language to help us navigate the abyss.

- 'Caught by the River'

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