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25 September 2026
As it is our 500th newsletter, we have been casting our eye back over the last ten years of reviews. I was intending to review Tīhema Baker’s excellent new novel, One Day A Taniwha, but I’m still a few pages from the end (you can read my review of Turncoat in the meantime, though). My excuse for the unfinished book: emptying my mother’s house. I’ve been sorting, packing and discarding, and cleaning. While looking back at 10 years of reviews, I came across one of my favourites from the ‘Object Lessons’ series – Shipping Container. I was intrigued by this theme for a number of reasons. Firstly, I live in a city with a port; secondly, I had delivered a Pecha Kucha back in 2008 called ‘Cargo’ about the act of making jewellery and shipping it to Amsterdam for an exhibition; thirdly, if you sell goods, you are aware of the movement of these goods; fourthly, I love history and what it tells you about how we change and adapt; fifthly, containers are a designed object that carries all objects; and sixthly, containers can’t help but be considered in a socio-political context. There are probably quite a few other reasons to be fascinated by the shipping container (e.g. the opening and closing mechanisms — and then I start wondering if I could make these on a jewellery scale…) but back to why I am intrigued all over again. This week is the skip week ( after the sorting, and taking-to-op-shops-and-recycling-centre). Many things in the basement have to go. All those dusty workshop materials that might of been handy and are no longer so, the kitset cupboards that were never quite right and abandoned, the worn-out-but-not-thrown-away-because-there-was-still-some-use-in-them appliances, the tools with blunt ends or sharpened so often they no longer are the objects they started as, the off-cuts, the small pieces of pipe, generally had-it things, well used but now not useful. And as I loaded the skip, and looked back at our reviews, I suddenly saw the shipping container and the skip as sister objects. One bringing in goods, the other sending them away. Our consumption, even of objects well-used over time, a marker of something both personal and universal. And then I started to think about the Gulf and the containers stuck at sea, of the shenanigans of rogue players and what does it mean to control the seas, and who benefits from shortages and interruptions, and who suffers? And then, what’s in all those containers? I hope for useful and/or beautiful objects, but I imagine there is a mulitude of cheap, plastic five minute wonders. But the good news is: books continue to come across the seas, sometimes we wait a while but it’s worth it. And now that we are in the season of publishing there will be a flurry of new arrivals to add to our reading piles.
You can read my original Shipping Container review here. And see the wide range of ‘Object Lessons’ series here. And coming up in October, I’ll be talking about books that feature objects on RNZ.
If the first recorded ‘drawing’ by an animal was a picture by an orangutan of the bars of its cage, what does this tell us about art? Are we ‘creative’ only to the extent that we are constrained, and is that constraint always therefore the underlying subject of our art? Nabokov’s assertion that such a drawing was made at Paris’s Jardin des Plantes zoo cannot be verified by documentation but seems to contain a truth that is too appealing to discredit (possibly this ‘seeming to contain a truth’ is more important to us than an actual truth, expressing a shared subjective state beyond the reach of facts, even though such thinking is the basis of our worst sorts of actions as well as of our best), but it is interesting that this supposed drawing was made by the sort of animal we see as most ‘similar’ to ourselves and that this ‘art’ occurred in a zoo, a place where we, as adults at least, see our own predicament in the constrained lives, boredom, helplessness and frustration of the animals, but are also kept separate from them by the grammar of the cage. The two zones demarcated by a single set of bars differ perhaps in physical scale more than they do in type. Is it for this reason that zoos are "deeply sad”, as Zambreno states in one of their reports that comprise ‘Zoo Studies’, the first half of this little book. “There is perhaps no more pronounced gap of awareness between a child and adult than when visiting the zoo,” writes Zambreno of visiting the zoo with their children, though they acknowledge, too, that children may experience the intense melancholy inherent in the species-alienation and the gazes that pass between the viewers and the viewed, gazes predicated on the bars through which they pass. Do we visit zoos to see in animals that which we are not or do not want to be? Are children more able than adults at seeing the actual individual behind the label on the cage? As adults are we blinded to the experiences of others by the very indignities of separation, classification and containment that we have expressed upon them?
The second half of Zambreno’s book, ‘My Kafka Method’, considers the actual impossibility of such a separation, through an accumulation of observations and fragments responding to first the life and then the animal stories of Franz Kafka. They see Kafka’s ambivalence about what could be called his ‘animal’ nature (though, when written, this term seems ludicrous) as the source of both his sufferings and his writings. If there is a zoo, Kafka is within the bars, his subjectivity complicated and enriched by the inescapability of his identification with the object of his attention. Our awareness, after all, is primarily a property of that of which we are aware. A text is a kind of cage in which the writer both performs for and avoids the gaze of the reader, a zone of both connection and separation, a space of porous and conflicted subjectivity, but Zambreno shows how, in Kafka’s stories, the circumstances of the writer, of the animal in the story, of Zambreno, of the reader — both of Kafka and of Zambreno — converge and begin to align. “Animals live in an ongoing present tense, the setting, possibly the subject, of this story,” Zambreno writes of ‘The Burrow’. Kafka does not exploit his animals as metaphors (“To make a metaphor of the animal is also to ignore the animal.”); he gives them enough vagueness of description to make them uncageable; he does not burden them with the sorts of meanings that would make their stories ‘signify’. “Don’t call them parables,” said Kafka. “If anything, call them animal stories.” We inhabit a zone of undifferentiated subjectivity. To draw a conclusion is to misrepresent the material.
Let this week’s flyers land on the top of your reading pile.
THE SHADOW OF THE OBJECT by Chloe Aridjis $38
'Chloe Aridjis is a revolutionary who is quietly changing the whole novel form. She is mining the richest seam in the vast field of fiction and coming up with gold. Her radiantly lyrical and intelligent writing is thrilling to read.' —Neel Mukherjee
DIRTY WORK by Nicky Hager $35
An exposé of the Taxpayers' Union and the wider spiderweb of lobby groups and astroturf organisations that have been working to push political discourse in New Zealand to the right, to use race politics to create division, and to smear and discredit those who oppose them. "I do not care and New Zealanders do not care about this topic." —Christopher Luxon
PRIMEVAL AND OTHER TIMES by Olga Tokarczuk (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) $40
‘The novel’s kaleidoscopic structure combines with its chronological sweep to create a portrait of a community that is at once epic and intimate, precise and universal. At times it has the feel of a dark fairy tale, with elements of magical realism and echoes of Hasidic folk legends; at others, we are unmistakably in the realm of historical reality.’ —Rebecca Abrams, Financial Times
U.X.O. by Brannavan Gnanalingam $30
“Brannavan Gnanalingam has become well known for gripping, occasionally gristly, writing about New Zealand society. From the first page U.X.O. he ups the stakes by writing about the Sri Lankan Civil War. And yet, somehow, the book is a page tuner.” —Murdoch Stephens
LIFE OF M by Rachel Cusk $37
Rachel Cusk’s new novel continues her project of applying stress to the conventions of the novel in order to make fiction reveal truths about life that we are conditioned to avoid. In Life of M a character who observes and writes describes or defines the life of a character who performs and is observed, a film star who finds no more autonomy in the role of herself than she does when she is acting.
In 2023 Nicky Hager was accused of writing an exposé of the Taxpayers' Union when he was not in fact writing an exposé of the Taxpayers' Union. This prompted insiders to approach him with information that led to him writing an exposé of the Taxpayers' Union and the wider spiderweb of lobby groups and astroturf organisations that have been working to push political discourse in New Zealand to the right and to smear and discredit those who oppose them. Driven by wealthy New Zealanders, Big Tobacco, corporate and other interests, and aligned with the Atlas Network internationally, the Taxpayers’ Union has been particularly effective in nudging ACT and the National Party towards espousing their hard-right goals and rhetoric, from dismantling public services to removing restictions on the operations of corporations. Hager reveals how the Taxpayers’ Union deliberately introduced race-based politics as a politcal lever, first to derail Three Waters on behalf of business interests and then to undermine democracy and weaken protections for the environment. Although Christopher Luxon is quoted as saying, “Can I just say up front, thanks to you and all your members for all the work you do. … I really like what you guys do,” not everyone towards the right is enamoured by the Taxpayers’ Union’s operations: this book is based on interviews with former members, employees, and other insiders.
All your choices are good! Click through to our website (or just email us) to secure your copies. We will dispatch your books by overnight courier or have them ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.
Dirty Work: The Taxpayers’ Union and New Zealand’s Hard Right by Nicky Hager $35
In 2023 Nicky Hager was accused of writing an exposé of the Taxpayers' Union when he was not in fact writing an exposé of the Taxpayers' Union. This prompted insiders to approach him with information that led to him writing an exposé of the Taxpayers' Union and the wider spiderweb of lobby groups and astroturf organisations that have been working to push political discourse in New Zealand to the right and to smear and discredit those who oppose them. Driven by wealthy New Zealanders, Big Tobacco, corporate and other interests, and aligned with the Atlas Network internationally, the Taxpayers’ Union has been particularly effective in nudging ACT and the National Party towards espousing their hard-right goals and rhetoric, from dismantling public services to removing restictions on the operations of corporations. Hager reveals how the Taxpayers’ Union deliberately introduced race-based politics as a politcal lever, first to derail Three Waters on behalf of business interests and then to undermine democracy and weaken protections for the environment. Although Christopher Luxon is quoted as saying, “Can I just say up front, thanks to you and all your members for all the work you do. … I really like what you guys do,” not everyone towards the right is enamoured by the Taxpayers’ Union’s operations: this book is based on interviews with former members, employees, and other insiders. [Paperback]
>>”Obsessed with one guy and a book.”
>>A rotten stench.
>>Tugging at the spiderweb.
>>Chiding in plain sight.
On the Equality of All Things: Physics and philosophy by Carlo Rovelli $50
What can we really know about the world around us? With clarity and lightness, physicist Carlo Rovelli guides us through the speculative depths of modern physics, unafraid to test their limits, not least because, as he suggests, there may be no final ground to reach. Electrons and minds, stones and laws, judgements and galaxies are not essentially different in nature from one another. They are ideas that illuminate each other. Reality, he shows, is shaped by this continuous play of reflections. From this emerges Rovelli's central insight: the equality of all things. Like the ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, who dreams he is a butterfly and wakes unsure whether he is Zhuangzi dreaming to be a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming to be Zhuangzi, Rovelli invites us to see reality anew, recognizing our knowledge is coherent but also uncertain and circular. We are made of the same stuff as the rest of reality — and so we are, in a deep sense, home in the world. [Hardback]
’A treatise that feels entirely liberating and brings its readers closer to the world around them. The poetic streak Rovelli is celebrated for is fully apparent through its pages, simultaneously enriching and contextualising the complex scientific ideas contained within.’ —AnOther
”’Interesting’ barely touches the sides with Rovelli.” —New Scientist
”Carlo Rovelli is the best thinker out there articulating physics, philosophy, and literature. There simply are no scientists of his caliber who also are humanists of the first order. His prose has the enviable ability to expand the realm of the utterable and, with it, the reach of our intellectual experience.” —Hernan Diaz
>>The poet of physics.
Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys through Ancient literature by Emily Wilson $33
How do we give old words new voices? What must a translator lose — and might she gain — when she moves between languages, bringing ancient stories to modern life? Reflecting on the inspiration, interpretation and (mis)appropriation of words from Antiquity to today, Emily Wilson invites us to explore the translator's art and mind — and gives a wholly fresh insight into the joys and quandaries of her own work. From Athenian comedy and Rome's love of Greek culture to Han Kang's novels, Cardi B's lyrics and the discoveries she made whilst translating Homer, this is a playful and fascinating voyage into the promise, possibility and constant renewal of our founding classical culture. [Paperback]
”Emily Wilson's brilliant reconsiderations of the ancient world — through the figure of Helen of Troy, the remaking of the Iliad by Christopher Logue, the use of comedy to grapple with dark matters, even slavery, and much besides — makes this an enthralling and profoundly relevant book.” —Salman Rushdie
”I adored reading these joyful, illuminating, and engrossing journeys through ancient literature. Wilson's interest is wide-ranging, moving with elegance and insight across genres and millennia. With wit, passion, and clarity, she invites us into each of these fascinating subjects. The final essay especially is required reading for anyone interested in translation, drawing back the veil on how a brilliant scholar and writer approaches her work.” —Madeline Miller
”We're incredibly lucky to have Emily Wilson writing about the art, politics and ethics of translation and retranslation. Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea is an impressive display of Wilson's expertise, conviction and wit. Her impact within and without the world of literary translation has been huge.” —Jen Calleja
>>Her Iliad.
>>Her Odyssey.
Kua Tau: A life in stories by Tainui Stephens $50
‘When we’re young, we learn the stories of others. / When we’re adults, we create our own story. / When we’re old, we tell our story.’ From the beginning, Tainui Stephens has been finding stories. In people, in place, and in the shifting shape of Māori life in Aotearoa. And through a career in filmmaking, broadcasting and cultural advocacy, he has been finding himself. Kua Tau gathers up a kete of his best writing on these subjects, drawing from his much-loved essays for the online magazine E-Tangata. From the turbulence of the 1970s and 1980s to the powerful iwi Māori of today, Stephens writes about the people who shaped him. Kaumātua of the old world. Marae aunties. Rangatahi finding their place. Activists, artists, whānau and friends. The essays travel through reo and tikanga, identity, leadership, racism, grief and joy. Warm, direct and deeply grounded, this is writing from a superb storyteller, and a book about the stories that make us whole. [Wrappered paperback]
Death Takes Me by Cristina Rivera Garza (translated from Spanish by Sarah Booker and Robin Myers) $25
”beware of me, my love / beware of the silent woman in the desert...” These are the words the Professor finds, scrawled in nail polish, above the mutilated corpse of a man. She reports the crime to the police and becomes the first informant in an investigation led by the Detective, who has a new-found obsession with poetry. As the bodies of more men are discovered alongside cryptic lines of verse, it becomes clear that this is only one in a string of crimes — all connected, all with literary clues. As the Professor becomes wrapped up in the murders, the boundaries of story — and of genre — break down. Can the Detective decipher the meaning of the poems in time to stop the spread of violence? [Paperback]
”This detective novel radically scrambles what we think of, and how we relate to, the genre. The case is ‘full of psychological nooks and crannies. Of poetic shadows. Gender traps. Metaphors. Metonyms.’ That also describes Rivera Garza's exceptional style, and the deeply rewarding experience of reading Death Takes Me. The novel is dense and elliptical, a dreamscape with a powerful undertow. A harrowing and labyrinthine masterpiece.” —New York Times
”Rivera Garza, who won a Pulitzer prize last year for her memoir of femicide in Mexico, plays with form, blending fiction with an essay complete with footnotes, satirising media coverage, incorporating comments on the publication of the book we're reading, and generally having fun. Her exuberance is contagious. ‘Reading shouldn't be so complicated,’ says one character. ‘A matter of turning the page.’ Of course, it's both.” —Spectator
The Strangers by Naomi Alderman $38
They came from nowhere, and now they are everywhere. A few months after her mother dies, the novelist Naomi Alderman sets up a wildlife camera in the back garden of her parents' home. It captures the first image of a strange new animal. Low to the ground, about the size of a badger, flat face, long, trunk-like nose. Suddenly these ‘mimmoths’ are as common as foxes or dogs. And no one knows where they've come from. As Alderman negotiates the territory of grief — a place with its own logic and rhythms — the mimmoths spread. From the UK east and west, to the United States, to Russia, to India. They seem harmless, but oddly intelligent. They cannot be captured, they will not take food from humans, they have their own purposes. Alderman cannot shake the feeling that she has a particular connection to the creatures. Or is she just succumbing to 'mimmoth psychosis'? As the impact of the mimmoths increases, she is pulled into the cross currents of conspiracy theories and global power struggles. Have her deeply personal forms of mourning lent recent events a surreal air, or is our reality changing drastically and irrevocably? From the author of The Power, The Strangers is a original and moving novel that blurs the lines between fiction and reality, inviting us to reconsider what it means to be human. [Paperback]
”In the same way that a gravestone is an attempt to give form to an absence, Alderman's structural ingenuity allows the reader to wrangle some of the ineffable aspects of grief into something more coherent and bounded.” —Guardian
”An entirely new species of writing about grief. I loved this weird, warm-blooded, and inquisitive book.” —Eleanor Catton
The Home of the Drowned by Elin Anna Labba (translated from Swedish by Elizabeth Clark Wessel) $38
Every summer, Inga, her mother Ravdna, and her Aunt Anne travel west to their village on the lake. But the summer Inga is thirteen, they arrive to find their home and possessions have disappeared under water, the land flooded by a dam built to supply hydropower to a society that has continually stolen from them. The Home of the Drowned follows these Sámi women's fortunes over forty years — from 1942 to 1982 — as the water their people have lived near for centuries is transformed into a menacing force that threatens all they hold dear. Defying the authorities, Ravdna decides to build a house on the lake to replace what was lost, becoming an unlikely activist. Meanwhile, Anne's health is in decline, and a concerned Inga merely longs to live like everyone else — an impossible wish when the Swedish state is relentlessly drowning her world. Drawing on her own family's history of forced relocation and violent colonial dispossession, Elin Anna Labba's debut novel brings Sámi history to the fore. The Home of the Drowned reveals connections between land, water and people that hauntingly reverberate with the question: what is it that makes a home? [Hardback]
”Powerful. The book explores memory, marginalisation and what happens when collective wisdom is washed away by modernity. One of the novel's most delightful aspects is the way Labba conveys not just a Sámi way of life, but a Sámi perception of the world.” —Financial Times
>>Also by Labba: The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow: The forced sisplacement of the Northern Sámi.
My Tiny Universe by Maryam Master $19
Leif is named after a valiant Viking. But being a two-foot nothing, fraidy-cat kid with a thousand and one phobias is about as far from valiant as you can get. He's a Certified Science Enthusiast and has a brain as large and mysterious as the universe. He's not one of the cool kids at school. Or the geeks. He's not even one of the misfits. (Have you ever heard of a misfit who didn't fit in with other misfits?) Leif's different in every way, but especially because he was the first kid to be born with CIA (Climate Induced Anomalies). He didn't have a single friend at West Hershey College, before Albie came along. And that's when all the trouble really began. [Paperback]
The Korean Vegan Cookbook: Reflections and recipes from Omma’s kitchen by Joanne Lee Molinaro $75
The single most frequent question Joanne Lee Molinaro gets asked is "How can you be vegan and Korean?" Korean cooking is, after all, synonymous with fish sauce and barbecue. And although grilled meat is indeed prevalent in some Korean food, the ingredients that filled out the bapsangs of Joanne's childhood — doenjang (fermented soybean paste), gochujang (chili sauce), dashima (seaweed), and more — are fully plant-based, unbelievably flavorful, and totally Korean. In her debut cookbook, Joanne shares recipes and narrative snapshots of the food that shaped her family history. Some of the recipes come straight from her childhood: Jjajangmyun, the rich Korean-Chinese black bean noodles she ate on birthdays, or the humble Gamja Guk, a potato-and-leek soup her father makes. Some pay homage: Chocolate Sweet Potato Cake is an ode to the two foods that saved her mother's life, Kale & Ramen Salad with noodle "croutons" and a dressing akin to ramen broth. With the intimate storytelling and stunning photography she's become known for on social media, The Korean Vegan Cookbook celebrates how deeply food and family shape our identity. [Hardback]
>>Look inside.
Redwood: The untold story of the Cold War’s most extraordinary spy by Ben Macintyre $40
The year is 1981. Tehran is in violent turmoil in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. The Soviets are planning to overthrow the Ayatollah's fledgling Islamist regime. If they do so, one response contemplated in the secret chambers of American power — unknown to the public — would be to strike with nuclear weapons. Redwood is the story of how, at the height of the Cold War, one mysterious double agent, whose intelligence reached the highest levels of American and British governments, cracked open the KGB, revealed the Kremlin's secret plot, and prevented Armageddon. "Redwood" was the MI6 codename for this unsung, hitherto-unknown hero of the Cold War, a highly trained, six-foot-four Russian intelligence officer who chose to expose the KGB's deepest secrets, compelled to swap sides by a shaming secret of his own. Facing exposure, with both the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and his own KGB colleagues closing in, he demanded that MI6 try to smuggle him out of Iran in a high-stakes escape plan. This is the gripping tale of one man's courage, and its unintended consequences that still shape our world today. It's about a moving friendship between spies on opposite sides of the global conflict; about marriage, loyalty, betrayal and sexual dysfunction; and about how decisions made in secret can have huge, long-term ramifications. Drawing on never-before-seen material from archives in multiple countries, and interviews with the participants including officers from MI6 and MI5, the KGB and CIA, Redwood plunges readers back into the shadowy world of The Spy and the Traitor. It lifts the lid on an unknown and highly significant Cold War victory, on the machinations of history's Great Game, and on how espionage really works. [Paperback]
"John le Carré's nonfiction counterpart." —The New York Times
Wiggling Words by Kate Rolfe $20
An inspiring story about a child lost in a forest of letters. Action words, can be pesky things to master and nobody understands the struggle better than the young child in Wiggling Words. Skip, trip, fumble and fall with them as they discover that even though words can be tricky, they can be fun too! The perfect book to share with children with dyslexia and other neurodivergence to encourage problem-solving and build confidence. [Paperback]
>>Look inside!
All your choices are good! Click through to our website (or just email us) to secure your copies. We will dispatch your books by overnight courier or have them ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.
U.X.O. by Brannavan Gnanalingam $30
An Indian soldier recounts to his young grandson in Aotearoa his time as a member of the Indian Peacekeeping Force in Jaffna, Sri Lanka during the Sri Lankan Civil War (1987-1990). As his narratives develop, the novel digs deeper into a very contemporary problem: what it means to be complicit in violence during wartime. As the book progresses, readers are confronted with the question of whether this is a grandfather’s stories for a curious grandson or an honest recounting of life during wartime? Or maybe it is a great confession, told in fragments? U.X.O. is a powerful investigation into the mind of an occupying soldier, and the extent to which people — through literature — can be held to account for war crimes, decades later in a country on the other side of the world. [Paperback]
“Brannavan Gnanalingam has become well known for gripping, occasionally gristly, writing about New Zealand society. From the first page U.X.O. he ups the stakes by writing about the Sri Lankan Civil War. And yet, somehow, the book is a page tuner.” —Murdoch Stephens
>>Other books by Brannavan Gnanalingam.
Pākehā Metaphysics by Murdoch Stephens $30
Perhaps best known for his work on refugee protection, Murdoch Stephens turns his mind inwards with a new book Pākehā Metaphysics. In this new book, he employs fresh introspective and speculative thought in a table turning attempt to better understand the unique identity of the Pākehā people. In turn, the book aims to revitalise some aspects of metaphysics which have been ignored with the rise of scientific explanations. These aspects include the relation between appearances and essences, the three omnis — omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience and whether metaphysics can be grounded in something other than universals or specific places. The book is structured around the old rhyme used to direct a bride’s comportment for a wedding: something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. These four chapters both describe the implicit Pākehā metaphysics as they have come to exist while also gesturing at what direction Pākehā metaphysics should take for optimal existence. Not content to survey the past or dabble in futurism, the book also asks: How Pākehā can escape the metaphysical blues of the West? And, what, if anything, can Pākehā legitimately borrow from place-based and indigenous metaphysics? [Woodgrain paperback (each copy unique)]
"A witty and entertaining antidote to the navel-gazing angst of recent Pākehā accounts of living in Aotearoa. Stephens uses the decidedly unfashionable philosophical branch of metaphysics to re-cast how we all could think about how we engage with our place in this country." —Brannavan Gnanalingam
“What does it mean to be Pākehā? In a way, Stephens takes a very un-Pākehā approach to answering this question — by completely avoiding the placement of himself and his experiences at the centre of it. Instead, Pākehā Metaphysics is a refreshingly existential unpacking of Pākehā being. Incisive, funny, and somehow nihilistically hopeful, this is a welcome addition to Pākehā identity discourse.” —Tīhema Baker (Raukawa te Au ki te Tonga, Ātiawa ki Whakarongotai, Ngāti Toa Rangatira).
La Tarttoria: Intuitive Italian cooking by Dara Klein $85
Rustic southern Italian cooking inspired by la cucina povera of Puglia. Raised in the hustle and bustle of her parent's Italian restaurant, Dara Klein, the chef behind Tiella trattoria & bar, has been helping to build lasagne and stealing spoonfuls of tiramisu since early childhood. After her two-year stint as resident chef at London's famous Compton Arms pub, Dara returned to her home kitchen ready to distil a life of culinary experience into unfussy, honest recipes like Sugo di pomodoro (slow cooked tomatoes), Braised Ox Cheek and the perfect seasonal side salad. A natural teacher, Dara presents her kitchen know-how in the same way she trained her team of chefs to really interrogate how to build flavour into your cooking. You'll enjoy the process and learn how to cook instinctively, just like an Italian mamma. Featuring insights into life behind the scenes at London's buzziest eateries and the tips and tricks you can use to get exceptional quality food at home, La Trattoria is an indispensable guide to Italian cookery and an ode to family restaurants around the world. Dara Klein has a New Zealand connection: her childhood shaped by her family’s restaurant in Wellington, before heading to Melbourne and then London to cook. This is her story, her heritage, and in these pages she will teach you how to use all your senses to improve your cooking knowledge and bring to the table irrestistable eating delights. [Hardback]
>>Look inside!
>>Browse other cookbooks.
Sophie, Standing There by Meg Mason $38
Sophie Pattison is such a lovely person. Warm, kind, amazingly positive. She works as a freelance sound technician for literary festivals. She is a massive reader and was recently forced to moved house. She is bracingly lonely. But then, Sophie discovers an author through work, and comes to adore her. Her books, her interviews, podcasts, and wisdom and brilliance, her beautiful words. It's like, solace and company. It's almost like love. And Sophie would love to meet her, although she never will, obviously. The author would never come to her festival. She's too famous for that. Too brilliant, too beautiful. And in a way, thank goodness, because that would change everything. Sophie's entire life. But ... what if she did? From the author of Sorrow and Bliss. [Paperback]
'So smart, so funny, so moving — Mason has done it again, this time using behind the scenes of a literary festival to reveal the complexity of loneliness and how one woman attempts to dig herself out. I absolutely loved it.' —Bonnie Garmus
>>Can books save your life?
A Fortunate Man: The story of a country doctor by John Berger and Jean Mohr $28
In 1966 John Berger spent three months in the Forest of Dean shadowing an English country GP, John Sassall. Sassall is a fortunate man — his work occupies and fulfils him, he lives amongst the patients he treats, the line between his life and his work is happily blurred. In A Fortunate Man, Berger's text and the photography of Jean Mohr reveal with extraordinary intensity the life of a remarkable man. It is a portrait of one selfless individual and the rural community for which he became the hub. Drawing on psychology, biography and medicine A Fortunate Man is a portrait of sacrifice. It is also a profound exploration of what it means to be a doctor, to serve a community and to heal. With a new introduction by writer and GP, Gavin Francis. [Paperback]
”It's one of my favourite books in the world, an ongoing inspiration as to how books should be written (and photography used).” —Alain de Botton
”A genuine tour de force. The intimate portrait of one man and his microscopic world reveals the faults and strains of a whole society.” —Observer
”This extraordinary book unravels the tangled branches of the everyday to reveal the brightness within. It inspires me to think more slowly, more deeply, to wear acquired knowledge lightly, to open my senses more fully to the wonders in the plain and close-at-hand.” —James Meek
>>Look inside.
Mrs. Orwell by Andrea Chalupa and Brahm Revel $49
The Roaring Twenties are over, fascism is on the rise across Europe, and the dream of a workers' paradise is all but dead. But in the midst of these turbulent times, a love story unfolds — one that will forever reshape our political language and how we view the future. Mrs. Orwell follows poet Eileen Blair and her husband, George Orwell, as they forge the professional and romantic partnership that will eventually bring us Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. From a honeymoon fighting in the Spanish Civil War to narrow escapes from Stalin's agents and the London Blitz, the Blairs' campaign against fascism brings them face-to-face with some of the greatest threats of the 1930s. But while George struggles to make his voice heard despite political censorship, Eileen must fight to preserve her own voice within a marriage that threatens to consume her. This sweeping account of Eileen Blair's brief but dazzling life casts a light on a long-overlooked figure and her persistent defense of that most beloved, most vulnerable principle: the power of the pen. [Hardback]
"This energetic portrait brings to vivid life a critical influence on the work of Orwell — and the personal costs of activism." —Publisher's Weekly
>>Look inside.
>>Wifedom.
How to Resist Guilt: On what’s holding women back by Mona Chollet (translated from French by Emily Boyce) $39
A powerful exploration of self-blame, where it comes from, why women are prone to it, and what we can do about it. Many of us regularly hear a sarcastic, malevolent voice echoing in our heads, attacking us, lecturing us, putting us down. It tells us that whatever we do, we’re wrong. It says we’re worthless. We don’t deserve anything good. We’re fundamentally flawed. Our very existence is unjustified. It’s a voice that rings out particularly loudly if we’re women and belong to a minority group. In How to Resist Guilt, Mona Chollet shines a light on this enemy within. What exactly are these fears that have managed to enter the deepest recesses of our minds? How can they be identified? And, importantly, kept at bay? Exploring the guilt-tripping of women, especially mothers, the cult of work, which indexes our worth strictly in terms of our productivity, and the resurgence of mindsets intent on punishment or retribution, this is a powerful book about that little voice inside us and how to silence it. [Paperback]
Loneliness is a Molecule by Helena Fox $35
Miri was whole, once. She had a best friend, once. She knew who she was — or she thought she did. But now she is a million lonely molecules, flying through the air to a new life on the other side of the world. Rome is light and loud and cobblestones and gelaterias and ancient buildings next to modern ones. Rome is new people and a chance to get out of her head. Or is it into her head she needs to go, to find herself again? A poetic novel about friendship, family, forgiveness, trauma, love and happiness. [Paperback]
Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Camille de Peretti (translated from French by Hildegaard Serle) $38
Painted in Vienna in 1910, Gustav Klimt's 'Portrait of a Lady' was purchased by an anonymous collector in 1916, retouched by the master a year later, then stolen in 1997 before reappearing in the gardens of an Italian modern art museum in 2019. No art experts, museum curators, or police investigators actually know the identity of the young woman in the painting, nor the mysteries that surround the turbulent history of her portrait. From the streets of Vienna in 1900 to Texas in the 1980s, and from Manhattan during the Great Depression to contemporary Italy, de Peretti imagines the destiny of this young woman as well as that of her descendants, and creates a masterful fresco that intertwines family secrets, disappearances, and thwarted loves. [Paperback with french flaps]
"A remarkable melange of mystery and art crime malfeasance." —Financial Times
"A magnificent and unforgettable adventure." —Buzz Magazine
Against Identity: The wisdom of escaping the Self by Alexander Douglas $32
Modern life encourages us to pursue the perfect identity. Whether we aspire to become the best lawyer or charity worker, life partner or celebrity influencer, we emulate exemplars that exist in the world — hoping it will bring us happiness. But this often leads to a complex game of envy and pride. We achieve these identities but want others to imitate us. We disagree with those whose identities contradict ours — leading to polarisation and even violence. And yet when they thump against us, we are ashamed to ring hollow. In Against Identity, philosopher Alexander Douglas seeks an alternative wisdom. Searching the work of three thinkers — ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, Dutch Enlightenment thinker Benedict de Spinoza, and 20th Century French theorist René Girard — he explores how identity can be a spiritual violence that leads us away from truth. Through their worlds and radically different cultures, we discover how, at moments of historical rupture, our hunger for being grows: and yet, it is exactly these times when we should make peace with our indeterminacy and discover the freedom of escaping our selves. [Paperback]
”A profound meditation upon the way we perceive ourselves and the pits we frequently fall into, either as individuals or as groups, from the schoolyard to the nation state. Against Identity is revelatory, written with singular clarity and granite purpose, using little-known philosophies to think better and live with less turmoil, self-torture and aggression. In times of pessimism and chaos, it is a welcome voice of optimism and possibility.” —Richard Whatmore
”A philosophically rigorous yet impassioned critique of identity as both metaphysical error and social pathology. What the book offers is not an ethic of self-expression but a practice of disidentification: a way of letting go that is neither defeatist nor escapist, but attentive to the costs of identity and the possibilities that open up when we cease to grasp. Against Identity is generous, incisive, and quietly radical.” —Christine Tan
Aviarium by Dominic Couzens and Teagan White $60
Aviarium is a stunning showcase of the world of birds, in all their diverse glory. Fly high with gulls and terns, swoop and dive with swallows and flycatchers, go hunting with owls and eagles, swim with penguins and ducks, and take a stroll with kiwis and ostriches. Written by renowned bird expert and nature writer Dominic Couzens and breathtakingly illustrated by the artist Teagan White, Aviarium is a must-have gift for all bird lovers! [Large-format hardback]
>>Look inside!
A selection of books from our shelves that aim for at least the 600-page mark. Click through to find out more:
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18 September 2026
You may well ask why I am only reading the second in this series, when four have already been translated. I’ve been saving it, and I am pacing myself, becuase i know I will be disapppointed when the seventh and final instalment arrives and is read. I was captivated by the premise of Solvej Balle’s books. A woman stuck in a repeating day; well in fact her day doesn’t repeat — everyone else’s does, her days go on, but the date remains the same. As soon as I was back in November 18th Iwas hooked all over again. I love the mundanity of this book, her endless time, her inabiliity to hold onto things unless she sleeps in them or she tucks them under her pillow. Luckily, after a while objects stay with her. In this segment of her strange life, she is craving Christmas and New Year, and turns up at her parents, explains her predicament, and insists on Christmas. The next morning, they having forgotten about her being there and what happened, she explains her situation again. This time (her next day, their ordinary November 18th) there are only Christmas leftovers. As I was reading, I had all sorts of questions. Why didn’t her parents call her partner to alert him to Tara’s strange behaviour? Why did they not attempt to interfer in her, for what must have seemed to them, pyschological episode? But then I had the answer: they have forgotten. And then Tara is gone, in their minds never been there. She keeps moving, chasing the winter, going north looking for the cold, wanting to wear a winter dress. On her travels, she at first remains outside of others’ lives, but slowly she is allowing herself to become part of other people’s happenings. I wondered, is this dangerous? How will it change another’s experience, or will her interaction leave no residue? Or will Tara Selter end up divided across time and space if everything returns to normal? if we can understanding time at all, that is. Eventually she tires of this endless quest. She knows, despite her written record of the days that are going by, that it is November 18 and she can no longer pretend a winter that does not exist. She heads to warmer climes, and at the close of this book we find her settled in a flat, an invisible person, attending lectures at the university. She has a new hobby: an obsession with the Romans. Here we leave her and she teases us with her knowledge that there are others just like her. Tempting to read book three right now!
Fresh cookbooks for your hungry shelves have arrived at VOLUME. What’s not to like about a new Ottolenghi or exploring the delights of vegan cheese? The excellent Jeremy Lee dishes up another delicious morsel, and you can head to Italy with La Trattoria.
In SIMPLE TOO, Yotam Ottolenghi and colleague Verna Lochmuller embrace the simple act of cooking as a panacea to our noisy world, and for the pleasure of good food. From breakfast to supper, Simple Too is packed with everyday recipes rooted in good ingredients, time-saving tips and onepot wonders, alongside that Ottolenghi innovation.
In KITCHENING, Jeremy Lee brings us his signature style in writing and cooking through the seasons. You know you will have a delighful time submerged in this cookbook when the author’s opening notes state: “When it comes to adding salt, pepper and aromatics to dishes, caution is advised at all times as seasoning can happliy be adjusted if required, though woe betide the cook who blithely seaons too much for, as with life, it is the very devil to correct”. His previous book, Cooking, took out a swathe of awards, so expect more good food, enthusiasm and impeccable taste in this one.
Delve into classsic Italian dishes with chef Dara Klein. LA TRATTORIA: Intuitive Italian Cooking is packed with fresh, Pugliese-inspired cuisine. Hearty and comfortable, this is food to cook together, slow down with, and share. Dara Klein has a New Zealand connection: her childhood shaped by her family’s restaurant in Wellington, before heading to Melbourne and then London to cook. This is her story, her heritage, and in these pages she will teach you how to use all your senses to improve your cooking knowledge and bring to the table irrestistable eating delights.
Vegan diary expert Miyoko Schinner shares her knowledge and philosophy in THE VEGAN CREAMERY: Plant-based Cheese, Milk, Ice Cream and More. Keen to try your hand at plant-based milk, yoghurt, soft and hard cheeses, ice cream and butter? This is a superb book with excellent instructions and delicious recipes. Ingredients include watermelon seed kernels, chickpeas, barley and potatoes, as well as the expected nuts ranging from almonds to walnuts, so there’s plenty to explore. The 75 recipes include a paneer (soy and watermelon kernels), a truffle cheese (almonds and pumpkin seeds), a sharp cheddar (made from potato), and cashew-rice icecreams.
“I am inexhaustible on the subject of myself,” states Édouard Levé in this book which is nothing less than an attempt to exhaust everything that he can think of to say about himself, no matter how banal or embarrassing, with relentless objectivity. In one long string of seemingly random declarative statements without style or development or form (other than the form of the list, if a list can be said to be a form), the details accumulate with very fine grain, but the effect is disconcerting: the author comes no closer to exhausting his observations, and the idea that there is such a thing as a 'person' beyond the details seems more and more implausible. The list is not so much an accumulation as an obliteration: facts obscure that which they purport to represent. “I dream of an objective prose, but there is no such thing.” Levé’s style is deliberately and perfectly and admirably flat throughout (all perfect things should be admired (whatever that means)), like that of a police report. “I try to write prose that will be changed neither by translation nor by the passage of time.” The constructions often feel aphoristic but eschew the pretension of aphorisms to refer to anything other than the particulars of which they are constructed. There is no lens formed by these sentences to ‘see through’, no insight, no intimation of personality other than the jumbled bundling of details and tendencies assembled under the author’s name, no ‘self’ that expresses itself through these details or is approachable through these details, because we are none of us persons other than what we for convenience or comfort (or, rather, out of frustration and fear) bundle conceptually, mostly haphazardly, and treat as an entity or ‘person’. The more fact is compounded (or, rather, facts are compounded), the stronger the intimation that any attempt to exhaust the description of a person will approach what we usually think of as a person. “If I look in mirrors for long enough, a moment comes when my face stops meaning anything.” As well as demonstrating the impossibility of the task that it attempts, description also cancels itself by implying for each positive statement a complementary negative statement. Each statement of the self-description of Édouard Levé functions to include those of us among his readers who are similar and to exclude those who are dissimilar. We find each statement either in accord or in disagreement with a statement we could similarly (or dissimilarly) make about ourselves. The reader is charted in the text as much as the author. The reader is continually comparing themselves to the author, finding accord or otherwise, exercising the kind of judgement concealed beneath all social interaction but typically hidden by content and mutuality. In Autoportrait, the author’s self-obsession is matched by our fascination with him, with the kinds of details that may or may not come to light in social interchange. Because the author is not aware of us and is not reciprocally interested in us, or feigning reciprocal interest in us, as would be the case in ‘real life’ social interaction, we feel no shame in our fascination, our fascination is dispassionate, clinical. He is likewise unaffected by our interest or otherwise in him. But as well as bundling together an open set of details that we may conveniently think of as facts (“Everything I write is true, but so what?”) about Édouard Levé (or ‘Édouard Levé’), the text also conjures an inverse Édouard Levé (or inverse ‘Édouard Levé’) who is the opposite to him in every way, the person who nullifies him (in the way that all statements call into being their simple or compound opposites, their nullifiers). Levé’s obsession with identity, facsimile and the corrosive effects of representation reappear throughout the book, and towards the end he mentions the suicide of a friend from adolescence, which would form the basis for Levé’s final book, Suicide (after which Levé himself committed suicide). Édouard Levé was born on the same day as me, but on the other side of the planet. In Autoportrait he writes, “As a child I was convinced that I had a double on this earth, he and I were born on the same day, he had the same body, the same feelings I did, but not the same parents or the same background, for he lived on the other side of the planet, I knew that there was very little chance that I would meet him, but still I believed that this miracle would occur.” We never met.
‘Chloe Aridjis’s mysterious and free-wheeling novel begins with an unsettling image: a seemingly disembodied hand, waving in mid-air, which is swiftly bitten by a confused Alsatian. The subsequent story, which follows the jewellery polisher Flora as she recovers from the attack in Mexico City before returning home to London, is similarly rich in strange imagery that slips us between the real world and dream-states. There’s darkened figure in a hospital corridor; figures flickering on a wall; a vignette from the point of view of a mouse. We were charmed by the novel’s meditation on friendship and grief, and its suggestion that the most meaningful truths can be found in the shadows.’ —2026 Booker Prize judges’ citation
”Chloe Aridjis is a revolutionary who is quietly changing the whole novel form. She is mining the richest seam in the vast field of fiction and coming up with gold. Her radiantly lyrical and intelligent writing is thrilling to read.” —Neel Mukherjee
”Clandestine, compassionate, and ever so slightly off-kilter, Chloe Aridjis's magnificent sleight of hand reshuffles the novel and places before us a beautiful and mischievous magic lantern of a book that casts out a multitude of unforgettable scenes, while shining a steady granular light on the hidden depths of the human psyche.” —Claire-Louise Bennett
Let this week’s flyers land on the top of your reading pile.
PRIMEVAL AND OTHER TIMES by Olga Tokarczuk (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) $40
‘The novel’s kaleidoscopic structure combines with its chronological sweep to create a portrait of a community that is at once epic and intimate, precise and universal. At times it has the feel of a dark fairy tale, with elements of magical realism and echoes of Hasidic folk legends; at others, we are unmistakably in the realm of historical reality.’ —Rebecca Abrams, Financial Times
LIFE OF M by Rachel Cusk $37
Rachel Cusk’s new novel continues her project of applying stress to the conventions of the novel in order to make fiction reveal truths about life that we are conditioned to avoid. In Life of M a character who observes and writes describes or defines the life of a character who performs and is observed, a film star who finds no more autonomy in the role of herself than she does when she is acting.
THE BEGINNING COMES AFTER THE END by Rebecca Solnit $37
”The optimism of this book arrives like a breath of fresh air. Solnit is adamant that positive change — social, political, climate — is not only a possibility but inevitable.” —Irish Times
THE END OF EVERYTHING by M. John Harrison $33
’The sky is glitching, and something strange, formless and growing is soon to come out of the sea, to imitate our speech, forms, and customs. Our left-behind inhabitants scavenge where and what they can, provisional alliances are made and broken, shocking violence occurs, and no one can agree on exactly what has happened. A book not just about everything but about now. Shimmering and oblique, it holds the reader to the surface of something very grave and deep.’ —2026 Booker Prize judges’ citation
HERE WHERE WE LIVE IS OUR COUNTRY: The story of the Jewish Bund by Molly Crabapple $40
”Vast in scope, elegiac in prose, this book brings to life the profound humanity of those who stood up to the blood soaked ethno-nationalisms that led to so many of the twentieth century's storied horrors. All the while, Crabapple never lets us forget that they were also fighting for a world that would not give rise to such evil. This book is many things: an ode to the grand legacy of anti-Zionist Jewishness; a profound reflection on whether history has morals; and an essential resource for anti-fascist history, concepts and tools.” — Jason Stanley
All your choices are good! Click through to our website (or just email us) to secure your copies. We will dispatch your books by overnight courier or have them ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.
Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk (translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) $40
“People think they live more intensely than animals, than plants, and especially than things. Animals sense that they live more intensely than plants and things. Plants dream that they live more intensely than things. But things last, and this lasting is more alive than anything else.” Primeval and Other Times is the story of three generations of a small Polish village called Primeval, from 1914 to the beginnings of Solidarity in 1980. Centered around the fate of the Niebieski family (Michał, Genowefa, Misia Boska, and Izydor), whose struggles and loves during a century of war and occupation determine the book’s dramatic arc, Primeval and Other Times is structured into short chapters, the “Times” of the novel’s title. Each Time tells the story of a different character or locale—human, animal, vegetable, mineral, and spirit. Some of the Times are interrelated, as in the case of the Niebieski family; some closely peripheral, like that of Cornspike, a witch-healer who lives in the forest with her daughter Ruta; and some emerge only once, such as the Time of Kurt, a German officer stationed to Primeval during the occupation. Bloodshed, betrayal, and the dramas of daily life mark the birth, life, and decline of Primeval's little world and Times, making us consider afresh the stories by which we comprehend our own. [Paperback]
‘The novel’s kaleidoscopic structure combines with its chronological sweep to create a portrait of a community that is at once epic and intimate, precise and universal. At times it has the feel of a dark fairy tale, with elements of magical realism and echoes of Hasidic folk legends; at others, we are unmistakably in the realm of historical reality. The “times” that cover the annihilation of Primeval’s Jews are stark and unsparing.’ —Rebecca Abrams, Financial Times
‘A constellation of eerie fables, focusing on the inhabitants of a single village, from a soothsayer to a coffee grinder…. If Tokarczuk’s work does have a single binding philosophy, it is one centred on all-encompassing empathy, and it therefore manifests in rich, authentic characters.’ —Sam Corbett, The Times
>>Territory and terroir.
>>Other books by Olga Tokarczuk.
The Fall by Penelope Curtis $39
The Fall traces three paths taken through one small village in Lincolnshire – by Isaac Newton, who received his first schooling there in the mid-17th century; by the Rev. Charles Hudson, who was vicar in the 1860s; and by the actor David Niven, who visited his mother-in-law there in the 1940s. Each is intent on his own preoccupations – on understanding the physical world, on conquering the Matterhorn, on conquering women – but there is a thread which binds them. An insignificant village becomes the unwitting centre of life-changing events and inevitable tragedy. Told from the margins – through the experience of a questioning child, and of wives and mothers who live as helpmeets to their men – The Fall is an act of vivid observation and reclamation. [Paperback]
‘It is a rare pleasure to read such beautifully clear prose, with its attractively poignant mixture of sadness and calm.’ —Gavin Bryars
‘Rich and spare, idiosyncratic yet full of big currents of life and history. The times feel simultaneous, all here at once on the surface of the present, as well as reaching and echoing across centuries. Young Isaac will live in my mind – wandering about planning his sundial – but the whole works as a sort of astronomical clock with its moving parts aligning in different ways.’ —Alexandra Harris
Book of Wills edited by Reem Ghanayem $49
'To write a will under siege is not surrender — it's defiance. It says: I existed. I felt. I belonged. I am not yours to erase.' —Reem Ghanayem. In Book of Wills, eighteen Gazan writers share their last will and testament. Several of the writers who contributed to this collection — including Rifaat Al-Ara'ir, whose poem 'If I Must Die' brought home the realities of war to so many — have since been killed. A profound exploration of the written word as an act of resistance, Book of Wills commemorates the lives and memories of the Gazan people, ensuring their stories are recorded. Forewords by Judith Butler and Alberto Manguel. [Paperback with French flaps]
'There is almost no politics in Book of Wills, which brings together the testimonies of Gazan writers from the heart of the war. This is an emotional portrait of life in the shadow of horror and death, where every moment may be the last.' —Suha Taweel Kadry
'These writings invite us to think and ask very important questions. What can language do in the face of this existential catastrophe?' —Karim Mohamed
'It seems that the Palestinian has nothing left to offer the world except his will.' —Karim Mohamed
'This book isn't just for reading, it's a book for history. It's important for the words in this book to stay alive.' —Yasmine Hassan
'Timely, relevant, and powerful. Book of Wills is part of the remedy as it gathers Palestinian voices with the invitation to speak, to love, and to connect and be heard.' —Ibtisam Barakat
>>”I refuse to let news of my death pass without notice.”
Early Light by Osamu Dazai (translated from Japanese by Donald Keene and Ralph McCarthy) $34
Early Light offers three very different aspects of Osamu Dazai's genius: the title story relates his misadventures as a drinker and a family man in the terrible fire bombings of Tokyo at the end of WWII. Having lost their own home, he and his wife flee with a new baby boy and their little girl to relatives in Kofu, only to be bombed out anew. “Everything's gone, the father explains to his daughter: Mr. Rabbit, our shoes, the Ogigari house, the Chino house, they all burned up, Yeah, they all burned up, she said, still smiling.” ‘One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji’, another autobiographical tale, is much more comic: Dazai finds himself unable to escape the famous views, the beauty once immortalized by Hokusai and now reduced to a cliche. In the end, young girls torment him by pressing him into taking their photo before the famous peak: “Goodbye, he hisses through his teeth, Mount Fuji. Thanks for everything. Click.” And the final story is ‘Villon's Wife’, a small masterpiece, which relates the awakening to power of a drunkard's wife. She transforms herself into a woman not to be defeated by anything, not by her husband being a thief, a megalomaniacal writer, and a wastrel. Single-handedly, she saves the day by concluding that “There's nothing wrong with being a monster, is there? As long as we can stay alive.” [Large-format glazed papered boards]
"It is here that themes explored throughout the series — identity's abnegation under the weight of art and history, the attendant wish for an alternative that fails to arrive — appear in their most unvarnished form." —J.W. McCormack, The New Left Review
"I like Dazai a lot." —Wong Kar-Wai
>>No Longer Human.
Glasses by Adam Gleczy $23
Glasses are among the oldest and most commonplace prosthetics we have invented. But what does it mean to wear glasses? There is more to the answer than correcting vision. Glasses alter, enhance, and shield the way that we view the world, and the way the world sees us. Everyone has encounters with glasses, passively or actively, from reading glasses to sunglasses. At times they are the main identifiers in a face (think John Lennon), and they signify extremes from nerdy and brainy to cool and sleazy. They are alternately the most mundane of things on our bodies and potentially the most glamorous. Adam Geczy explores this most pervasive and accessible accessory and shows that it is both a conduit to and a barrier between ourselves and the world outside. [Paperback with French flaps]
”Glasses offers an insightful and engaging reflection on optics as aesthetics, asking what it means to look, and to be looked at, through and within lenses. With clarity and ease, it explores how glasses shape not only what we see but how we are seen. Sharp, focused, and full of vision.” —Ania Malinowska
”A brisk pop meditation and manifesto, Adam Geczy's Glasses finds the poetry in prosthesis. As an unrepentant four-eyed nerd myself, I loved it.” —Jessica Glasscock
>>Other interesting books in the ‘Object Lessons’ series.
Front Row Seat: How sciencde can (and can’t) shape public decision-making by Juliet Gerrard $35
Responding to the terrorist attack on a Christchurch mosque and a global pandemic, the volcanic eruption at Whakaari/White Island, and the occupation of Parliament grounds, for six years Juliet Gerrard stood next to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her successors to provide the insights that science might bring to decisions on issues of public importance. Sometimes these were emergencies: How fast will Covid spread? How many people are likely to die under different policies? Will the mosque terrorist produce copycats? And sometimes they were longer-term issues: What does the science say about cannabis? Should we worry about 5G or genetic engineering? Will it be easy or hard to get rid of plastic bags? Through case studies like these, Gerrard reflects on the realities of providing evidence to inform policy in the political arena, unpacking the tensions and drawing out general principles. [Paperback]
'Juliet Gerrard's Front Row Seat offers a comprehensive look at what was a very challenging period for New Zealand, one in which science advice played a crucial role. It is to Gerrard's credit that the more exceptional events (a terrorist attack, an eruption, a pandemic) don't dominate the book. Indeed, she offers a wide range of case studies, and in doing so, traverses almost all the terrain a science advisor could be expected to encounter. I found the text very readable. Gerrard's warmth and sense of humour also come through strongly.' —Shaun Hendy
'For six momentous years, Dame Juliet Gerrard provided a vital bridge, linking the worlds of science and policy at the highest levels of government. Drawing on this unique experience, together with her deep scientific expertise and practical wisdom, Front Row Seat explores the challenge of harnessing robust evidence to improve decision-making and protect the public interest. In this disturbing era of populist mantras, industrial-scale misinformation, and post-truth politics, her book provides a sober, perceptive, inspiring, and highly accessible corrective.' —Jonathan Boston
'Front Row Seat is a masterclass in the practical application of evidence-based policymaking, bridging the gap between academia and the high-stakes reality of governance. Dame Juliet Gerrard offers a rare, behind-the-scenes look at how science navigates the world of politics. Part memoir and part manual, this book is an essential resource for leaders, researchers, and anyone looking to understand how science advice can help solve the most varied and complex challenges of our time. It is a timely reminder that the most effective decisions in science diplomacy are not made in isolation but are built on a foundation of rigorous evidence and collaborative expertise.' —Jan Ludert
Kitchening: Day-to-day good food, come rain or shine by Jeremy Lee $85
From Jeremy Lee, always good company in the kitchen, comes a new seasonal cookbook on the day-to-day kitchening of good food. In this follow-up to the multi-award-winning Cooking, Jeremy shows you how to make the most of local produce while finding joy in the simple act of being in the kitchen. With wit and expertise, he spotlights the finest offerings from each month of the year. There are spring classics like leeks vinaigrette and baked asparagus with parmesan; summer delights such as pickled mackerel with gooseberries or quail with artichokes and broad beans; autumn feasts like spiced chickpeas with a pot of polenta; and practical tips like how to joint and preserve a goose for a variety of winter dishes. Each season includes indispensable guidance on which cheeses to buy and essential pudding recipes, including peach and redcurrant trifle; pear and ginger tart; and lemon, ricotta and olive cake. There is plenty of clever advice on how to use a glut of produce, including compotes and preserves, and suggestions for swapping ingredients to make recipes work throughout the year. Kitchening is a beautifully packaged collection of timeless recipes, charming anecdotes and culinary wisdom. [Hardback]
'Overflowing with deliciousness.' —Margot Henderson
'Gorgeous recipes in an equally gorgeous book, written with Jeremy's innate intelligence and wit.' —Stanley Tucci
'Jeremy's simple dishes are glorious and his endearingly enthusiastic, poetic, witty and authoritative words are a joy to read.' —Claudia Roden
>>Look inside!
>>Also recommended: Cooking: Simply and well, for one or many.
Heresies: Occasional pieces by Richard Flanagan $40
From Manus to MONA to birds to Australia’s Black Summer, from the destruction of our natural world to the hope offered by Indigenous Australia to the growing corrosion of democracy, from Salman Rushdie to the Segal Report, family and love, Flanagan's non-fiction writings carry the author's trademark elegance, subversive wit, and humanity. This showcase of Richard Flanagan's heretical brilliance over twenty years speaks to the heart of our troubled times now. 'Heresy allows a writer to write freely, allows writing to be an act of joy that arises from the same deep place where laughter lives, countering the farce of dogma with the reality of life. Perhaps for any of us to write of hope, to write of love, we must learn once more to be free, and to embrace heresy.' Flanagan is the only author ever to have won both the Booker Prize and the Baillie Gifford Prize. [Paperback with French flaps]
>>Read our reviews of Question 7.
Ngā Hapa Reo by Hona Black and Te Aorangi Murphy-Fell $35
He Iti Te Kupu: Ngā huahuatau me ngā kupu whakarite by Hona Black $35
Fully te reo Māori editions of these two useful and popular works.
Surging interest in te reo Maori in recent years has led to a range of errors becoming common in classrooms and everyday use, many caused by language interference (following the patterns of English rather than te reo). Ngā Hapa Reo sets out to correct that trend with easy-to-follow, fun examples of language errors.
He Iti te Kupu contains nearly 500 sayings that draw a comparison between something (often the natural world) and people, events or contexts. This accessible guide explains the use, meaning and context of a host of the principal figures of speech in te Reo.
>>Get Ngā Hapa Reo.
>>Get He Iti Te Kupu.
The Newer World by Sebastian Barry $38
”I knew as I made my way home that there was no home. All the old things were gone forever.” In the aftermath of the American Civil War, Tennyson Bouguereau — freed man, devoted brother, nascent singer, conflicted soldier and wanted man — journeys to find meaning and belonging. From the relative safety of home in Tennessee with his sister Rosalee, he is offered the possibility of a whole new life in Nashville, until a surprising trip to Victorian England changes everything.The Newer World is a novel about what it is to survive, and what might be lost along the way. [Paperback]
"A beautiful, sweeping, intimate tale awash in miraculous language. That Tennyson's perspective is conjured so vividly, without any pretense, is the enduring triumph of this book." —Kirkus
"A mix of Larry McMurtry's novels of the West and Terence Malick's film The Tree of Life. Barry creates precise and stirring images that make the time and locations come alive, and the examination of what it means to be free creates excellent fodder for discussion." —Library Journal
"There's a beautiful looseness to the novel, almost a wildness, the mark of a true, natural storyteller. It's easily among his best works." —Kevin Barry
'A masterly work of historical witness and moral reckoning.' —Observer
The Bone Cave: A Highland journey through myth and memory by Dougie Strang $30
A vivid account of a journey through the Scottish Highlands, The Bone Cave follows a series of folktales and myths to the places in which they're set. Travelling mostly on foot, and camping along the way amid some of Scotland's most beautiful and rugged landscapes, Dougie Strang encounters a depth of meaning to the tales he tracks one that offers a unique perspective on place, culture, land ownership and ecological stewardship, as well as insights into his own entanglement with place. Dougie sets out on his walk at the beginning of October, which also marks the start of the red deer rut. The bellowing of stags forms the soundtrack to his journey and is a reminder that, as well as mapping invisible landscapes of story, he is also exploring the tangible, living landscape of the present. [Paperback]
’The Bone Cave is a meditation on the move; a listening to the voices of bird, wind and river, a holding onto tree and stone, a watching of deer. As Strang pitches his tent across the Highlands, kindling fire and memory, he draws us into the enfolded layers of landscape, wildlife and folktale that tell us who we were and yet might be. Wise and wonderful.’ —Merryn Glover, author of The Hidden Fires
'A fascinating insight into the ways in which landscape and folklore are intertwined in Scotland. The ways in which these stories are linked to the landscape — and to the daily lives of the people who used to inhabit it — are expertly teased out by Strang.' —Roger Cox, The Scotsman
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11 September 2026
Cruelty is never too far from the surface of Rachel Cusk's novel, Second Place. M owns an idyllic home on the marshland with her second husband Tony. They have rescued the land and built a home for themselves in this remote and abundant place, and share it, that is the cottage—the Second Place—by invitation. M has been fascinated by the art of L since an early encounter with his work in Paris after a nightmarish experience on a train, an experience that the reader is never fully informed about, yet the spectacular—a devil, metaphorical or real—remains as a threat throughout. So when M, after years of obsession with L, finally convinces the artist to come and stay, to retreat and paint, her expectations, as you can anticipate, are high. Her expectations of fulfilment, creatively and psychologically, are painfully ridiculous in a middle-aged, privileged sense. What does she expect from this special bond with L? When L arrives—by private jet of a friend’s cousin—with said friend in tow, the beautiful and young Brett, M is miffed. You can’t help but feel little empathy for her. Her desires are unreasonable and ethically questionable, let alone uncomfortable. M’s obsession with a self-seeking, seemingly loathsome and churlish fading artist is misguided at best. Add to the mix M’s daughter Justine and her German boyfriend Kurt, arrived from Berlin as their jobs pack in due to a downward economy (and Covid—although this isn’t mentioned by Cusk), and the perfect pressure cooker for a melodrama is set. The novel is told as to ‘Jeffers’ by letter. We never meet Jeffers and have little knowledge of who Jeffers is and why he plays such an important role as confidant to M. What we can decipher later, from the afterword, is that the novel is inspired by Mabel Dodge Luhan’s memoir Lorenzo in Taos, published in 1932 (there’s a contemporary review in the New York Times archive) about D.H.Lawrence’s stay at her artist retreat in New Mexico. Here too, is a story of obsession and delusion, and letters to Robinson Jeffers about Mabel’s experience with the Lawrences. Yet you don’t need to know this to find the writing compelling, the prose poised and the content both farcical (the storyline of Kurt deciding to be a writer and his ‘reading’ is priceless) and unsettling. It will make you squirm. This is a novel about ownership—who owns whom—and the power or agency of one over the other or the ideas of the other. M will come to despise L and L already despises M, and sets out to destroy her. Yet his ability to do so is compromised by his own weakness, according to M. And here lies the dilemma: the narrator. You can’t like her. Her complete preoccupation with herself and her property, whitewashed, much like the walls of the cottage, with a veneer of care, is revealed in her asides to Jeffers and by her knowing attitude about the creative process within the isolation of someone basically just talking to themselves. Yet, the novel reverberates within its cliches and set-ups to bring the reader to the eye-watering conclusion that Cusk has cleverly played a game of cards where most of the best cards are hers—and the reader is in second place.
A puzzle, he said, noticing that I was attempting a rather easy and common sort of puzzle, one which I nonetheless was finding challenging, possibly due to the fact that he was observing me, a puzzle I was in any case doing only to fill in the time as I waited for him to stop talking, a puzzle is a poor sort of puzzle because everyone recognises it as a puzzle, he said, unlike language, which is a stronger sort of puzzle because it is not obvious whether it is a puzzle or not. I knew better than to ask him what he meant by this statement, partly because I didn’t really want to encourage him to deliver one of his long-winded explanations but mainly because I knew that once he had made a statement like that he would deliver one of his long-winded explanations whether he was asked to explain it or not; it seemed not to occur to him that any long-winded explanation delivered by him might not be received with the enthusiasm with which it was delivered. At least it was good to see him enthusiastic. He had just finished reading Rachel Cusk’s novel, Parade, and was now, it seemed, ready to explain it to me, although not yet having finished it had not stopped him explaining it to me as he was reading it, or at least from frequently exclaiming about it in such a way that was not sufficiently coherent to pass as an explanation, not that his explanations were in themselves generally in any case coherent. Parade, he explained, splices a series of observations by a narrator who exists only as a gap in the text with a carousel of ‘biographical’ sketches of artists (fictional — all named ‘G’ — but often sharing qualities and trajectories with identifiable artists in the ‘real world’) to explore, distil, and complicate issues of narrative, character, gender politics (especially as transacted in the arts), the irreconcilable ambivalence of intergenerational relations (here he made that irritating gesture in the air with both hands about and throughout the phrase as if to indicate that if anybody were to transcribe the phrase they should put it in inverted commas (even though italics would be to my mind more appropriate)), the problem of subjectivity, and the performance of power and persona that both characterises and occludes collective life on both the intimate and societal scales, or so he said. Parade, he said, continued Cusk’s project of the ‘Outline Trilogy’, of withdrawing the narratorial involvement from the novel, sometimes perfecting an entirely non-participatory, characterless ‘we’, without assuming, or presuming, really, access to the minds of any of the characters other than as evidenced by their actions or their words. “To see without being seen: there was no better definition of the artist’s vocation,” he read suddenly from a place he had marked in the book. Cusk achieves a wonderfully clean and perfectly flat style, he said, achieving an impeccable neutrality, almost an anonymity, on the most passionate and involving subjects, reporting conversations without contributing to them, but from a near perspective, like the parent in the novel filming her child in the school play so closely and so exclusively that, at least in her representation of it, the play itself made no sense other than that contingent upon the performance of her child. “Pure perception that involves no interaction, no subjectivity, reveals the pathos of identity,” he read again, or had memorised, or was pretending to read or to have memorised in order to give his opinions more authority. There is no self, no absolute, no identity, no definitive, he shouted, I think now lost to his own metastasising speculations, at best only barely suppressed, no self, no absolute, no identity, no definitive other than as they exist in language! There are no persons, no characters, he said, and I think he was referring to our lived reality as much as to the book that he had read. It reminds me, he said, calming a little, of Nathalie Sarruate's Planetarium, in that persons are unimportant or are at least shown to be entirely constructed by phrases and thoughts and attitudes clustering together and adhering to each other, a phenomenon that is more the province of language than a property of any living actuality. Again, the impulses, motivations and attitudes that may or may not exist in the unconscious, so to call it, he said, or in the preconscious, and we cannot say anything about these states, which cannot be said even to be states because to do so would be to make them or at least their existence to some extent conscious, he claimed, these impulses, motivations and attitudes require and are also formed by the language that is used to express them in order to be expressed. Was he even making sense, I wondered, but he did not pause, seemingly untroubled by such a possibility. Cusk’s practice, kicking away the novelistic crutches, so to call them, he said, removing the distractions of plot, the illusions of character, or at least by demonstrating that plot is a distraction and character an illusion, helps us to see more clearly, to be both present and not present, both involved and uninvolved, both when reading a novel and when reading our own lives, for want of a better term to call them. Language contains the inclinations, he said, that we usually and by mistake apply to persons. I suppose that this is what he may have meant when he spoke of language being a puzzle of a stronger sort, but he did not give me a chance to ask him this. Undermining our expectations of cohesion on personal, artistic and societal levels, he continued, and with regard to the forms of what we think of as fiction, Parade provokes and enlivens the reader’s own literary faculties and makes them an active participant in this exercise of awareness and destabilisation. I exercised my concentration, finished my rather easy and common sort of puzzle, which at least was readily identifiable as a puzzle, and left the room despite his continuing explanation.
‘Two beachcombers meet and exchange words at the intertidal; we are in Kent, and it is the near-future, but one that recognises itself to be in the middle of a catastrophe. The sky is glitching, and something strange, formless and growing is soon to come out of the sea, to imitate our speech, forms, and customs. Our left-behind inhabitants scavenge where and what they can, provisional alliances are made and broken, shocking violence occurs, and no one can agree on exactly what has happened. A book not just about everything but about now. Shimmering and oblique, it holds the reader to the surface of something very grave and deep.’ —2026 Booker Prize judges’ citation
‘Many of M. John Harrison’s previous novels warn about the fantastic as a consolation, and the risks of exceeding the appropriate prescription, and I think The End of Everything may also be read as a depiction of a world subject to overdose, where lives have been saturated by the unreal. There is a grain of ambiguous hope in one character’s declaration that it doesn’t matter that the world has ended, “because another one will be along soon enough,” but what I felt when the novel released me was more immediate. I felt the urge to go outside, to run around and shout, not to celebrate the novel’s brilliance (although I think it is brilliant), but simply to prove that, for now, something real still exists.’ —Niall Harrison, Locus Mag
Let this week’s flyers land on the top of your reading pile.
THE FINEST HOTEL IN KABUL: A People’s History of Afghanistan by Lyse Doucet $40
The Winner of the 2026 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction ”plays to all Lyse Doucet's strengths: clarity, empathy, depth of knowledge and innate grasp of fine detail. Her subject is not just a hotel, but a hotel that tells the story of four decades of Afghanistan's proud and sometimes unbelievably painful history. This is a most readable account of joy, despair and resilience in one of the world's most fascinating countries.” —Michael Palin
SAID THE DEAD by Doireann Ní Ghríofa $38
Blending detailed research with the sensitvities of a novelist and poet, Said the Dead breaches the boundaries that contain the past to resuscitate the voices of women who were inmates in a now-derelict Victorian mental hospital in the city of Cork. As the narrator follows their traces through the archives and through the corridors, she finds in the murmurings of these women much that resonate with her own life and experiences.
ORDINARY PEOPLE LIKE US by Kelly Ana Morey $38
’Ordinary People Like Us explores much of what was important to Morey in her own life and heritage, including her love of history and her deep empathy for the landscapes and communities of the Far North. She celebrates her characters’ mixed heritage, as well as the strength of women, the bonds that link us and, true to her own interests, the significance of art, architecture and objects. But what makes this novel so different is KAM’s inspired imagination, which takes us up to the rafters, where kēhua watch, bitch and comment on their descendants below.’ —Harriet Allan
SWITZY by Emma Cline $38
’A perfect novel, one that goes to the places only novels can go.’ —Samantha Harvey
LIFE OF M by Rachel Cusk $37
Rachel Cusk’s new novel continues her project of applying stress to the conventions of the novel in order to make fiction reveal truths about life that we are conditioned to avoid. In Life of M a character who observes and writes describes or defines the life of a character who performs and is observed, a film star who finds no more autonomy in the role of herself than she does when she is acting.
