Marina Benjamin grew up in London feeling estranged from her family's exotic Middle Eastern ways. She refused to speak the Arabic her mother and grandmother spoke at home. She rejected the peculiar food they ate in favor of hamburgers and beer. But when Benjamin had her own child a few years ago, she realized that she was losing her link to the past.In Last Days in Babylon, Benjamin delves into the story of her family's life among the Jews of Iraq in the f...

Named a Best Book of the Year by BuzzFeed“An insomniac’s ideal sleep aid—and that’s a compliment. With her collage of ruminations about sleeplessness, [Benjamin] promises no real cure . . . What she offers instead is a rare kind of companionship.” —The AtlanticInsomnia is on the rise. Villainous and unforgiving, it’s the enemy o f energy and focus, the thief of our repose. But can insomnia be an ally, too, a validator of t...

Featured in Stylist’s ‘Can’t Miss’ Books of 2023Sometimes I think that carrying — other people, the continuity of history, generational identity, the emotional load of the everyday — is the main thing that women do.In Marina Benjamin’s new set of interlinked essays, she turns her astute eye to the tasks once termed ‘women’s work’. From cooking and cleaning to caring for an ageing relative, A Little Give depicts do...

"In The Middlepause Benjamin deftly and brilliantly examines the losses and unexpected gains she experienced in menopause. Menopause is a mind and body shift as monumental and universal as puberty, yet far less often discussed, especially in public, which is what makes Benjamin's work here so urgently necessary." —Kate Tuttle, The Los Angeles TimesThe Middlepause offers a vision of contentment in middle age, without sentiment or delusion....

In 1958, mankind's centuries-long flirtation with space flight became a torrid love affair. For a decade, tens of millions of people were enraptured -- first, by the U.S.-Soviet race to the moon, and finally, as America outstripped its rival, by Project Apollo alone. It is now more than three decades since the last man walked on the moon...more time than between the first moonwalk and the beginning of World War II. Apollo did not, as had been promised by a generation of visionaries, herald...

In a society obsessed with living longer and looking younger, what does middle age nowadays mean? How should a 50-something be in a world ceaselessly redefining ageing, youth and experience? The Middlepause offers hope, and heart. Cutting through society’s clamorous demands to work longer and stay young, it delivers a clear-eyed account of midlife’s challenges. Spurred by her own brutal propulsion into menopause, Marina Benjamin weighs the losses, joys and opportunities of our middle years...

With her new memoir Insomnia, Marina Benjamin has produced an unsettling account of an unsettling condition that treats our inability to sleep not as a disorder, but as an existential experience that can electrify our understanding of ourselves, and of creativity and love. Insomnia is a bravura piece of writing. At once philosophical and poetical, the book ranges widely over history and culture, literature and art, exploring a threshold experience that is intimately involved with trespass ...

Sometimes I think that carrying – other people, the continuity of history, generational identity, the emotional load of the everyday – is the main thing that women do. In Marina Benjamin’s new set of interlinked essays, she turns her astute eye to the tasks once termed ‘women’s work’. From cooking and cleaning to caring for an ageing relative, A Little Give depicts domestic life anew: as a site of paradox and conflict, but also of solace and profound meaning. Here, productivity sits alongs...