BOOK REVIEW Published in: NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, issue no. 2/2011 The Creative Politics of Unhappiness Book Review of: The Promise of Happiness Sara Ahmed Duke University Press, 2010 ISBN 978-0-8223-4725-5 (230 pp.) Krizia Nardini, Graduate Gender Programme, Utrecht University Matilda Lindgren, Graduate Gender Programme, Södertörn University Contact Author: krizia.nardini@live.it What is the relationship between happiness and ethics? What kind of desire is the desire for happiness, and how are these questions related to feminist, queer and anti-racist politics? In The Promise of Happiness Sara Ahmed, Professor of Race and Cultural Studies at Goldsmith University, sets out to unpack what is at stake in claims of happiness as well as unhappiness. Ahmed is previously known for her illustrative and ground-breaking work on the intersection of the political with the emotional in The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2004) and the orientation devices inherent in the western philosophical heritage in Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (2006), and her recent book demonstrates continuity with these fruitful and creative engagements with the “affective turn”. Her argumentative style connects acute theoretical observations with meticulous cultural analysis, while continuously putting even more on the table and giving us an extremely rich repertoire of figures and examples to work with.