Bloomsbury presents Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith, read by Patti Smith.  

From the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids and M Train, a profound, beautifully realised memoir in which dreams and reality are vividly woven into a tapestry of one transformative year.   

Following a run of New Year’s concerts at San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland, with no design yet heeding signs, including a talking sign that looms above her, prodding and sparring like the Cheshire Cat.  

In February, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing with it unexpected turns, heightened mischief and inescapable sorrow. In a stranger’s words, 'Anything is possible: after all, it’s the year of the monkey.' For Patti Smith - inveterately curious, always exploring, tracking thoughts, writing the year evolves as one of reckoning with the changes in life’s gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America.   

Smith melds the Western landscape with her own dreamscape. Taking us from Southern California to the Arizona desert; to a Kentucky farm as the amanuensis of a friend in crisis; to the hospital room of a valued mentor; and by turns to remembered and imagined places - this haunting memoir blends fact and fiction with poetic mastery. The unexpected happens; grief and disillusionment. But as Patti Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the listener: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye and, above all, a rugged hope of a better world.  

Riveting, elegant, often humorous, Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times.