Join us

Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Newsletter

Wallace Shawn

Sleeping Among Sheep Under a Starry Sky
Essays 1985-2021

Cover: Sleeping Among Sheep Under a Starry Sky Essays 1985-2021 - Wallace Shawn

Wallace Shawn

Sleeping Among Sheep Under a Starry Sky
Essays 1985-2021

2022, pp. 195, Hardcover
ISBN: 9781787703636
Region: United States
Available as ebook Available as ebook Available as ebook
£ 16.99
Read a free sample Read a free sample Read a free sample

The book

“Lovely, hilarious, and seriously thought-provoking.” TONI MORRISON

SLEEPING AMONG SHEEP UNDER A STARRY SKY is a collection of essays written over the course of the last thirty-five years.

rgb;">Shawn seems to start from the premise that the world ought to be a place where all of us can lie around on cushions writing letters and love poems to each other on multi-coloured paper, as perhaps the women and men of the eleventh-century Heian court in Japan were able to do. Why do we not inhabit a world in which beauty, sensuality, and the adoration of other people, other beings, and the natural world are our principal preoccupations? Why, instead, are we obsessed with a joyless struggle for supremacy over each other? Why have we invented races and nations? Is what we call “civilization” the precipitating cause of our destructiveness and viciousness, our sadism, our love of murder? Shawn himself grew up as a child of privilege and has devoted his life to aesthetic pursuits and hedonism. Has the life he’s led provided him with any sort of valuable vantage point from which to view the world, or has he simply been a parasite? As he himself feels that the answer isn’t clear, a certain self-questioning underlies these essays, along with a nagging doubt about whether we’re right to insist that all of our different qualities and aspects cohere into a single “self.” If the self is simply an illusion, how can we understand “ourselves”? And if we don’t understand ourselves, what conclusions should we draw from that? 

The author

Wallace Shawn
Wallace Shawn is an American playwright, actor, and essayist.

Books by region

  • Cover: Delicious Foods - James Hannaham

    James Hannaham

    Delicious Foods

    2024, pp. 368, £ 14.99
    A moving story of freedom, perseverance, and survival.
  • Cover: Bite your Friends: Stories of the Body Militant - Fernanda Eberstadt

    Fernanda Eberstadt

    Bite your Friends: Stories of the Body Militant

    2024, pp. 288, £ 18.99
    A history of the body as a site of resistance to power, and a subversive memoir.
  • Cover: The Dolphin House - Audrey Schulman

    Audrey Schulman

    The Dolphin House

    2023, 539 min., £ 15.60
    A young woman and her extraordinary connection with a pod of dolphins. From the award-winning author of Theory of Bastards.
  • Cover: Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta - James Hannaham

    James Hannaham

    Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta

    2023, pp. 304, £ 9.99
    From the award winning author of Delicious Foods, the raucous, irreverent, and heart wrenching story of a transgender woman.
  • Cover: Y/N - Esther Yi

    Esther Yi

    Y/N

    2023, pp. 196, £ 14.99
    Surreal, hilarious, and shrewdly poignant—a novel about a Korean American woman living in Berlin whose obsession with a K-pop idol sends her...
  • Cover: Acts of Service - Lillian Fishman

    Lillian Fishman

    Acts of Service

    2023, pp. 224, £ 9.99
    A provocative debut exploring sex and sexuality as a twentysomething New Yorker pursues a sexual freedom that follows no lines other than her own...

More suggestions

  • Cover: The Passenger: Thailand - AA.VV.

    AA.VV.

    The Passenger: Thailand

    2025, pp. 192, £ 18.99
    “These books are so rich and engrossing that it is rewarding to read them even when one is stuck at home.”—The TLS
  • Cover: Displaced. Civilians in the Russia-Ukraine War - Valery Panyushkin

    Valery Panyushkin

    Displaced. Civilians in the Russia-Ukraine War

    2025, pp. 240, £ 9.99
    A Russian journalist’s first-hand account of the heartbreak and resilience of ordinary Ukrainians faced with Putin’s aggression.
  • Cover: A Rebel in Gaza: A Daughter of Rafah Speaks - Asmaa Alghoul, Sélim Nassib

    Asmaa Alghoul, Sélim Nassib

    A Rebel in Gaza: A Daughter of Rafah Speaks

    2024, pp. 208, £ 14.99
    “Gaza has always been rebellious... stubborn, addictive. I’m her daughter, and I look like her.”
  • Cover: The Passenger: Naples - AA.VV.

    AA.VV.

    The Passenger: Naples

    2024, pp. 192, £ 18.99
    For better or worse, Naples always amazes.
  • Cover: Shifting the Moon from its Orbit - Andrea Marcolongo

    Andrea Marcolongo

    Shifting the Moon from its Orbit

    2024, pp. 144, £ 13.99
    A reflection on loss, memory, and what we owe to the past, inspired by a night spent in Athens’ Acropolis Museum.
  • Cover: Displaced. Civilians in the Russia-Ukraine War - Valery Panyushkin

    Valery Panyushkin

    Displaced. Civilians in the Russia-Ukraine War

    2024, pp. , £ 14.99
    A Russian journalist’s first-hand account of the heartbreak and resilience of ordinary Ukrainians faced with Putin’s aggression.