Bad Taste

"Nathalie Olah is one of the sharpest social critics of the post-crash era and Bad Taste doesn't disappoint. At once vulnerable and biting, Olah lays bare the ways in which ""culture war"" is submerged and prettified class war. She reminds us that capitalism, far from giving us what we want, conditions us to accept a narrowed view of what is possible, lulling us to forego pleasure and connection in favour of austerity and toil. * Sarah Jaffe, author of Work Won't Love You Back * Olah is Britain's foremost culture writer. * Vicky Spratt, author of Tenants * Provocative, vital and rigorously argued . . . Bad Taste deftly moves between aesthetics and politics, the playful and the polemical, with a nuanced attention to power and meaning in everything from a fake Renoir painting to Frasier Crane's fluffy hair . . . I finished Bad Taste with a sense of joy and possibility, witness to the thorough dismantling of a set of sexist, racist and classist criteria which have long put a limit on society's self-expression and desires. * Rebecca Birrell, author of This Dark Country * Bad Taste is a searing polemic about the ways that money, power and social class shape our lives. But Olah is just as sharp when it comes to critiquing aesthetic trends, and the book is also a witty, erudite and engaging history of food, fashion, interior design and other forms of visual culture. Like much of the best political writing, it makes complex ideas accessible without ever dumbing them down. * James Greig, editor at Dazed * Nathalie Olah is one of the most interesting, creative and vital critical minds of her generation. Bad Taste is a gorgeous dissection of the culture we live in. * Camilla Grudova, author of Children of Paradise * A terrifically clear sighted and often very funny interrogation of the oddities of 'taste' and its political implications. * Francisco Garcia, author of We All Go Into the Dark * Bad Taste is a funny, punchy, kaleidoscopic page-turner that pulls at the tangled threads of class, commerce and culture until they start to unspool, and then just keeps yanking. * The Skinny * [Bad Taste has] really changed how I think about so much of what I considered every day, trivial and yet innately accepted parts of culture . . . An incredibly lucid view of a confused world. -- Tom Usher Olah proves an astute and acidic commentator. -- Richard Godwin * The Guardian *"