“Full of wisdom and comfort…a really important book about embracing truth and reality which will help a lot of people leave their fantasies and dive into real life”
“Oliver Burkeman has a way of giving you the most unexpected productivity advice exactly when you need it”
“Meditations for Mortals offers a practical path toward personal transformation … A must-read”
Meditations for Mortals:
Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts
by Oliver Burkeman
Hardback / 12 September 2024 / Vintage
Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman’s breakout international bestseller, touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of readers. Inspired and moved by Burkeman’s investigation into how to live unblinkingly in the face of our limited time on earth, some of them changed their lives: they made big decisions to rethink careers, relationships, priorities, and misguided assumptions about productivity.
Meditations for Mortals takes us on a liberating journey towards a more meaningful life – one that begins not with fantasies of the ideal existence, but with the reality in which we actually find ourselves.
Addressing the fundamental questions about how to live, it offers a powerful new way to take action on what counts: a guiding philosophy of life Oliver Burkeman calls ‘imperfectionism’. How can we embrace our non-negotiable limitations? Or make good decisions when there’s always too much to do? What if purposeful productivity were often about letting things happen, not making them happen?
Reflecting on ideas drawn from philosophy, religion, literature, psychology, and self-help, Burkeman explores practical tools and shifts in perspective. The result is a bracing challenge to much familiar advice, and a profound yet entertaining crash course in living more fully.
To be read either as a four-week ‘retreat of the mind’ or devoured in one or two sittings, Meditations for Mortals will be a source of solace and inspiration, and an aid to a saner, freer, and more enchantment-filled life. In anxiety-inducing times, it is rich in truths we have never needed more.
ABOUT OLIVER Burkeman
Oliver Burkeman is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling Four Thousand Weeks and The Antidote, and for many years wrote a popular weekly column on psychology for the Guardian, 'This Column Will Change Your Life'. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Psychologies and New Philosopher.
He has a devoted following for his writing on productivity, mortality, the power of limits, and building a meaningful life in an age of bewilderment. For more information - oliverburkeman.com
Selected Praise for Four Thousand Weeks
'Perfectly pitched somewhere between practical self-help and philosophical quest' - Observer
'Full of such sage and sane advice, delivered with dry wit and a benevolent tone' - Guardian
'Life is finite. You don't have to fit everything in... Read this book and wake up to a new way of thinking and living’ - Emma Gannon
'Every sentence is riven with gold’ - Chris Evans
'Comforting, fascinating, engaging, inspiring and useful' - Marian Keyes
‘Four Thousand Weeks is a book to read and re-read, to absorb and reflect on. Compassionate, funny and wise, it has not left my mind since I read it. The modern world teaches us to pretend to be immortal - this book is a dip in the cold, clear waters of reality, returning us refreshed and alive.’ - Naomi Alderman, author of The Power
Oliver will be speaking at events around publication:
Edinburgh International Festival – 24 August
City Screen Picturehouse, York (Waterstones) – 10 September
Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights, Bath – 11 September
How To Academy (at the Royal Geographical Society) – 12 September
Cambridge Literary Festival – 17 September
Cheltenham Literary Festival – 8 October
Durham Literary Festival – 13 October
Wimbledon BookFest – 20 October
Toppings, Edinburgh – 6 November
Stroud Festival – 7 November
Berwins Salon North – 13 February 2025
With more to be confirmed
For further information please contact:
EMMA FINNIGAN PR
07870 210468 | emma@emmafinniganpr.co.uk | @emmafinnigan | www.emmafinniganpr.co.uk