Allen & Unwin Creating Freedom book Philosophy English Paperback 496 pages

Writer, artist and award-winning film-maker Raoul Martinez's radical, revolutionary and highly provocative rethink of freedom.

We are far less free than we like to think. In Creating Freedom, Raoul Martinez exposes the mechanisms of control that pervade our lives and the myths on which they depend. Exploring the lottery of our birth, the coercive influence of concentrated wealth, and the consent-manufacturing realities of undemocratic power, he shows that our faith in free media, free markets, free elections and free will is dangerously misplaced. Written with empathy and imagination, this scholarly, fierce and profoundly hopeful manifesto makes a dazzling case for creating freedom on our own terms.

Raoul Martinez is a writer, artist, and award-winning filmmaker. Creating Freedom is his first book. It is informed by over a decade of research and is accompanied by a documentary series of the same name. Episode One, The Lottery of Birth - produced, written and co-directed by Raoul - premiered in 2012. It was nominated for Best Documentary at London's Raindance Film Festival and went on to win the Artivist Spirit 2012 Award at Hollywood's Artivist Festival. It has been translated into several languages and the second film is currently in production. Raoul lives and works in London, where his paintings have been selected for exhibition in the National Portrait Gallery. www.creatingfreedom.info