Terry Eagleton is Distinguished Visiting Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University and the author of more than fifty books in the fields of literary theory, postmodernism, politics, ideology, and religion. He lives in Northern Ireland.

"He has lost neither his bracing self-certainty nor his caustic sense of humour. . . . Eagleton’s central argument is straightforward and suggestive."—Josh Cohen, New Statesman"Materialist thinkers of various stripes have been struggling of late to renew our sense of 'the commons.' They would do well to take to heart Terry Eagleton’s new, eminently commonsensical elaboration of the concept of materialism. Eagleton partners up with Marx, Nietzsche, Freud and Wittgenstein to awaken us to the materialism we already live, to which we have always already committed, in our embodied practices. We thereby come to see how the natural history of our forms of life implicates us in a creaturely solidarity with one another, the elaboration of which constitutes the conflict-ridden realm of politics. Eagleton’s uncommonly luminous prose holds out the promise that a genuinely common life – call it ordinary life – for creatures such as us might yet be achievable."—Eric L. Santner, author of On Creaturely Life"This is a well written and engaging book packed with interesting observations, analyses, some quite brilliant insights, and not a few jokes."—Paul O’Grady, editor of The Consolations of Philosophy