Aliveness

Name: Aliveness
Price: 39.99 AUD
Availability: PreOrder
ISBN: 9781847927606

Getting Things Done in an Age of Bewilderment

Oliver Burkeman

$39.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

The Bodley Head Ltd
27 October 2026

Have you felt that something is missing? It's ALIVENESS. It's the quality which makes life worth living. Find out how to get it and how to keep it. From the author of the global bestseller Four Thousand Weeks, a radically fresh way of engaging with life.

ALIVENESS is the bold successor to Four Thousand Weeks, which offers its reader, once again, a radically fresh way of engaging with life. This book is Oliver Burkeman's bracing answer to a widely shared, if only half-articulated, discontent- the feeling that in these alarming and uncertain times, something vital has drained out of our everyday lives.

ALIVENESS is the name of that missing quality- a feeling of vibrancy, clarity, connection and immediacy that's essential for living an accomplished and creative life - and a life that makes a difference in this deeply unsettling era.

Aliveness is what makes life worth living. It isn't the same as happiness, because you can feel alive in the midst of challenge or sadness. It's a quality AI and the robots will never have; it's what they can't fake. And our current sense of overwhelm, perma-crisis and threat definitely erodes it.

And so, in an age of doomerism and algorithmic predictability, Oliver Burkeman shows us that the problem isn't our lack of control but, rather, our desperate clinging to it. His invitation is to 'unclench', physically and psychologically, so as to step out of the defensive crouch in which we usually meet the world.

He explains how - by learning to relax into reality, embracing spontaneity and imperfect agency, and trusting our own idiosyncratic interests and desires - we can find our way back to feeling more fully and exhilaratingly alive.

By: Oliver Burkeman
Imprint: The Bodley Head Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 135mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 300g
ISBN: 9781847927606
ISBN 10: 1847927602
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 27 October 2026
Audience: General/trade , Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , ELT Advanced , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

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. oliverburkeman.com