‘Excellent, strong, clear and original’. Jacques Derrida.
‘A strong, inventive and daring book that does much more than most introductions are
capable of even dreaming’. Diane Elam, Cardiff University.
‘Readers couldn’t ask for a more authoritative and knowledgeable guide. Although there
is no playing down of the immensity of the implications of Derrida’s work, Royle’s
direct and often funny mode of address will make it less threatening than it can often
appear to beginners’. Derek Attridge, University of York.
In this entertaining and provocative introduction, Royle offers lucid explanations of var-
ious key ideas, including deconstruction, differance and the democracy to come. He also
gives attention, however, to a range of perhaps less obvious topics, such as earthquakes,
animals and animality, ghosts, monstrosity, the poematic, drugs, gifts, secrets, war and
mourning. Derrida is seen as an extraordinarily inventive thinker, as well as a brilliantly
imaginative and often very funny writer. Other critical introductions tend to highlight
the specifically philosophical nature and genealogy of his work. Royle’s book proceeds
in a new and different way, in particular by focusing on the crucial but strange place of
literature in Derrida’s writings. He thus provides an appreciation and understanding
based on detailed reference to Derrida’s texts, interwoven with close readings of liter-
ary works. In doing so, he explores Derrida’s consistent view that deconstruction is a
‘coming-to-terms with literature’. He emphasizes the ways in which ‘literature’, for
Derrida, is indissociably bound up with other concerns, such as philosophy and psycho-
analysis, politics and ethics, responsibility and justice, law and democracy.
Nicholas Royle is Professor of English at the University of Sussex. His books include
Telepathy and Literature: Essays on the Reading Mind (1990), After Derrida (1995), The
Uncanny (2003) and (with Andrew Bennett) An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and
Theory (1999). He is also the editor of Deconstructions: A User’s Guide (2000).
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JACQUES DERRIDA