Karavan Press title: Except for Breath by Lucienne Bestall

To begin with the liturgy of death, here intoned in Latin: pallor mortis, algor mortis, rigor mortis, livor mortis. To begin at the end. To begin with the deep blue marks of lividity blooming against pale skin.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Lucid and lyrical, Lucienne Bestall’s debut collection extends reflections on the seductions and limitations of language. With words and pictures borrowed from literature, contemporary art, art history, and mass media, Except for Breath asks after those experiences that elude simple description and turn instead to image and metaphor.

The collected essays appear an unlikely gathering – taking as their respective subjects death, disappointment, divine love, an unfamiliar city, the news, and headaches. Yet while each is discrete, together they share subtle affinities, their narratives shaped by memory’s impre­cisions and dreams retold, by magical thinking and wishful thinking, and coincidence mistaken as sign.

Pairing art writing and life writing, Bestall’s limpid prose is delicately revealing of her subjective encounter with a shared repertoire of familiar texts and images.

Publication date: February 2025

ISBN: 978-1-7764726-5-9

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

LUCIENNE BESTALL is a writer and curatorial researcher based in Cape Town. She holds a degree in Fine Art and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. Lucienne has contributed to several art surveys from Phaidon, and her essay ‘All the Dead’ was included in the anthology Our Ghosts Were Once People (Jonathan Ball, 2022). Another essay, ‘A History of Fire’, was published by Raritan (Rutgers University, 2021) and is listed among the notable essays and literary non-fiction in The Best American Essays anthology (HarperCollins Publishers, 2022).