In The Happy Life David Malouf addresses one of the most fundamental questions of all: what makes for a happy life? In an age where our bookshelves are stacked full of self-help volumes, popular philosophy and tales of perfect romantic love, his essay is pertinent and relevant. He asks why, when so many of the essential 'unhappinesses' - premature death, famine, plague, material poverty - have largely disappeared in the developed world, does happiness continue to elude us?
With elegance and insight, David Malouf discusses new and old ways to discuss the concept of happiness. He returns to the wisdom of the classics, and looks at how, thanks to Thomas Jefferson, happiness in the eighteenth-century became a 'right'; in a dialogue on Rubens and Rembrandt he explores the sensual happiness of the flesh; he covers the difficulties of the modern world's obsession with consumption, and the changing desires of the YouTube and Twitter generation; and finally the consolation and sympathy provided by art and literature.
In luminous prose, with ideas to savour and reflect upon, Malouf distills millennia of thought and philosophy in The Happy Life into a fascinating and tangible argument.
