Tim Beasley-Murray

I work on literature and ideas across a range of languages including English, Czech, French, German, Russian and Slovak.

My latest book, Critical games: on play and seriousness in academic, literature and life, is an exploration of the ludic dimension of something we normally think of as serious—academic activity and criticism—and of the serious dimension of something that we normally think of as playful—literature. It looks at a diverse range of thinkers (including Arendt, Bakhtin, Barthes, Benjamin, Caillois, Derrida, Freud, Felski, Huizinga, Suits) and a diverse range of writers (including Alexeich, Bolaño, Cortázar, de Vigan, Dickens, Doubrovsky, Flaubert, Kafka, Kundera) as well as at films and television. A particular role is played by the French writer, Emmanuel Carrère, whose work and life is the subject of provocative engagemet. Combining scholarly analysis, creative non-fiction, memoir, and satire, this book is an experiment in how criticism can get both more playful and more serious. It was published by Manchester University Press in 2025.