Is Beauty Good

Synopsis

A novel composed of thirty self-contained chapters, Is Beauty Good approaches its central question from every imaginable angle. Set in places as varied as Berlin trams, English gardens, mountain paths, and quiet rooms, its characters speak, reflect, argue, and remember, each offering a different meditation on beauty, pain, morality, memory, and the natural world. Rather than building toward a single answer, Rosalind Belben creates a mosaic of voices that gradually reveals the profound ways beauty shapes how we experience being alive.

Elegiac, philosophical, and formally daring, Is Beauty Good is unlike any conventional novel. Belben's luminous prose recalls the psychological depth of Virginia Woolf and the searching intensity of Thomas Bernhard, while remaining unmistakably her own. Rediscovered by NYRB Classics, this extraordinary work is a meditation on perception, loss, and the enduring value of beauty in an increasingly diminished world.

About the Author

Rosalind Belben is an English novelist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is the author of several acclaimed novels, including The Limit, Hound Music, Choosing Spectacles, and the James Tait Black Award-winning Our Horses in Egypt. Admired by generations of writers for her singular style and uncompromising vision, Belben has earned a reputation as one of Britain's most original literary voices. This edition includes an introduction by German writer and translator Esther Kinsky.

Publisher

NYRB Classics

Publication Date

August 11, 2026

Format

Paperback

Pages

160

Subjects

Literary Fiction · Philosophical Fiction · Modern Classics · British Literature · Experimental Fiction

ISBN

9798896230717