One of the age-old questions of philosophy is what does it mean to live a good life? In this extraordinary and highly-accessible book, scholar and acclaimed novelist, Julienne van Loon, applies a range of philosophical ideas to her own experience. Van Loon engages with the work of six leading contemporary thinkers and writers - Rosi Braidotti, Nancy Holmstrom, Siri Hustvedt, Laura Kipnis, Julia Kristeva and Marina Warner - through interrogating and enlivening their ideas on love, play, fear, work, wonder and friendship. She addresses ‘ordinary’ everyday topics as problems worthy of thinking through, about, around as well as thinking together.

Provocative, inventive, hard to put down (and not just for women!), van Loon’s journey is intellectual and deeply personal, political and intimate at once. It introduces readers to six extraordinary women whose own deeply thoughtful work has much to offer all of us. They may transform our own views of what it means to live a good life.

As the novelist Amanda Lohery puts it: The Thinking Woman is: a compelling portrait of the relationship between thinking and feeling .

Not for sale in Australia and New Zealand.