Erik Satie Three Piece Suite

‘A glorious celebration of this most elusive and ambiguous of early 20th-century composers…. A delight to read.’
— John Banville, Observer

‘Entertaining and enriching … this impressionistic work of criticism is nimble, dwelling in or creating poignant moods. I came away [with] a strong feel for [Satie’s] sensibility, and now find myself revisiting his music obsessively.’
— Jonathan McAloon, Financial Times

‘Ian Penman resists the urge to categorize Satie neatly, avoiding the reductive tendencies that often plague biographies. Satie’s life was full of contradictions … Penman does not impose an all-encompassing thesis. He avoids reading Satie’s life through the often overstated lenses of his sexuality and alcoholism. Instead, he embraces Satie’s life as a series of bizarre episodes, some of which are indistinguishable from dreams, rather than as a composite whole…. [Satie] was also radically ahead of his time. Surrealism, conceptual art and ambient music all owe the Honfleur native a great debt…. Penman treasures his entire oeuvre for embracing the “forgotten realm of quiet moments”. In a world that rarely slows down and in which silence seldom lingers, Satie’s music remains an antidote, an invitation to embrace repetition and emptiness.’
— Colm McKenna, Irish Times

‘Ian Penman is an ideal critic, one who invites you in, takes your coat, and hands you a drink as he sidles up to his topic. He has a modest mien, a feathery way with a sentence, a century’s worth of adroit cultural connections at the ready, and a great well of genuine passion, which quickly raises the temperature.’
— Lucy Sante, author of The Other Paris

‘Ian Penman – critic, essayist, mystical hack and charmer of sentences like they’re snakes – is the writer I have hardly gone a week without reading, reciting, summoning to mind. The writer without whom, etc.’
— Brian Dillon, author of Affinities

‘This is the only book I have read twice this year. Truly it is thousands of mirrors in terms of the thoughts, images and references running through this reflective and wonderfully interior work. The world of European cinema, especially Fassbinder’s film seen through Ian Penman’s eyes, has transported me to a tantalizing place called post-war Europe. The book brings me back to my youth and my film school years in the east and west, and it reminds me of how powerful images have shaped our very understanding of love and life.’
— Xialuo Guo, chair of the 2024 RSL Ondaatje Prize for Literature (praise for Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors)

‘[Fassbinder] Thousands of Mirrors is not a sorrowful kill-your-heroes recanting. It’s much more interesting than that – a freewheeling, hopscotching study of the Fassbinder allure and an investigation of Penman’s younger self…. It’s a book about a film-maker but also, hauntingly, about the way our tastes and passions change over time.’
— Anthony Quinn, Observer (praise for Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors)