Read our 424th newsletter
28 March 2025
“Children lose interest in their parents when they are left. They are not sentimental. They are passionate and cold. In a certain sense some people abandon affections, sentiments, as if they were things. With determination, without sorrow. They become strangers. They are no longer creatures that have been abandoned, but those who mentally beat a retreat. Parents are not necessary. Few things are necessary. The heart, incorruptible crystal.” Fleur Jaeggy’s unforgettable short novel, named after the ship upon which the narrator, aged fifteen, and her estranged father (unreachable, “aloof from himself”) spend an unprecedented and unrepeated fourteen-day cruise in the Greek Islands with members of the Swiss guild to which the father belongs, is a catalogue of mental retreat, relinquishment, estrangement, loss, and turning away: enervations towards a non-existence either hurried or postponed but inevitable to all. Jaeggy’s short sentences each have the precision of a stiletto: each stabs and surprises, making tiny wounds, each with a drop of glistening blood. When the narrator looks at her father Johannes’s diary, “written by a man precise in his absence,” her description of it could be of her own narration: “It is proof. It is the confirmation of an existence. Brief phrases. Without comment. Like answers to a questionnaire. There are no impressions, feelings. Life is simplified, almost as if it were not there.” Jaeggy writes with absolute, clinical precision but narrow focus, as if viewing the world down a tube, to great effect. Johannes, for example, is described as having “Pale, gelid eyes. Unnatural. Like a fairy tale about ice. Wintry eyes. With a glimmer of romantic caprice. The irises of such a clear, faded green that they made you feel uneasy. It is almost as if they lack the consistency of a gaze. As if they were an anomaly, generations old.” The account of the Greek cruise forms the core of the novel, but it is preceded, intercut and followed by memories of childhood and of subsequent events (mostly the deaths of almost everyone mentioned), all related closely in the present tense, but non-sequential, resulting in a sense of time not dissimilar to that experienced when repeatedly tripping over an unseen obstacle. Most of the book is narrated in the first person but the narrator achieves a degree of detachment from incidents that threaten “the exceedingly fine line between equilibrium and desperation” by relating them in the third person, referring to herself as “Johannes’s daughter”: the death of Orsola (the maternal grandmother with whom she lived after her parents’ divorce, her mother’s effective disappearance, her father’s sudden poverty and his effective exile from her life) and the violent sexual experiences she receives from two of the sailors: “I don’t like it, I don’t like it, she thinks. But she does it all the same. The Proleterka is the locus of experience. By the time the voyage is over, she must know everything. At the end of the voyage, Johannes’s daughter will be able to say: never again, not ever. No experience ever again.” The narrator writes her memories not so much to remember as to forget, to relinquish. Words turn experience into story, which interposes itself between experience and whoever is oppressed by it. As Jaeggy writes, “people imagine words in order to narrate the world and to substitute it.”
Oliver Wormwood is struggling to find a Trade. His five older sisters are all amazing. One is a mage, another a lawkeeper, Willow is a ranger, another a blacksmith and the first-born an explorer. All roles his father admires. Oliver isn’t great at any of them. The Calling day is not going well, and the last option presents itself with the late arrival of the librarian. Oliver’s life is about to change. It’s not the most daring Trade. Or so he thinks…. Day one in the Library, the head librarian drops dead in mid-sentence, there are cats that appear from nowhere, and the books seem to have a life of their own! This job may not be as dull as Oliver thought! And in fact a bit more dangerous than anticipated. But can he survive the day!
There are strange comings and goings, complicated enquiries, and much to learn about the returns system, the bookworms (large and hungry) who come out at night, the bats, and the hoovering books! Luckily, Oliver isn’t completely on his own. There’s a girl called Agatha who lives in the library and knows her way around, willing to give Oliver a helping hand. Yet there’s something odd about her. One moment she’s there right beside him, and at other times nowhere to be seen. There are also the cats, all with their distinct personalities and, as Oliver finds out, usefulness. One is a great guard cat, another adept at being ferocious (handy for beasts that accidently come out of books, and a pesky firedrake!), while others are great company. Even as Oliver settles into his daily tasks, things are far from plain sailing. There are thieves sneaking through the aisles, powerful books to protect, and other books that need to be handled very carefully. In this library what it says on the cover really does count; — Death by a Thousand Papercuts, anyone?
When several murders happen in or near the library, it’s time for Oliver to put his mind to the task, and solve the mystery. But who can he trust? Is the murderer in his midst? Where does Agatha dissappear to? Who is the stranger Simeon Golightly and what is he looking for? Why are some of Oliver’s sisters popping in to see him at the library? Just being friendly, or is there something else afoot? Or has a magical creature escaped its covers and gone on the rampage?
This is a highly enjoyable, amusing tale with plenty of twists and turns, with an excellent cast of brilliant characters, both human and animal. Oliver is the best friend for anyone who has ever doubted themselves, as he discovers talents he least expected and that being yourself is a good thing. If you like a book set in a library with cats, daring escapades, and magical books, The 113th Assistant Librarian will be perfect!
This is a significantly affecting work, comprised of mundane details noticed so clearly and described so precisely that they resonate and ‘clean out’ a reader’s perceptive and literary faculties. In 300 seven-line prose poems, von Sturmer opens his — and our — awareness to the particulars of both his surroundings and his memory, exploring insights beyond the reach of the rational mind that press at us from the quotidian world, drawing no distinctions between the beautiful, and awkward, and the absurd.
“This substantial publication with its witty and paradoxical title is a meditative poetry journal, artfully constructed to present what amounts to a series of mirabilia: anecdotes that might arouse astonishment or wonder in a spiritual sense. Richard von Sturmer’s poems seek illumination from the ordinary everyday world. Drawing partly on Buddhist teachings, life itself is here seen as miraculous. There's a dancing intelligence at work, highly alert, self aware, and fearless.” —judges’ citation, 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards
Set sail through stormy seas into a book from our shelves. Click through to find out more:
Replenish your reading pile with these new arrivals! Books can be sent by overnight courier or collected from our door.
The Place of Shells by Mai Ishizawa (translated from Japanese by Polly Barton) $40
In the summer of 2020, as Germany slowly emerges from lockdown, a young Japanese woman studying in Göttingen waits at the train station to meet an old friend. Nomiya died a decade earlier in the Tōhoku tsunami, but he has suddenly returned without any explanation. The reunited friends share a past that's a world away from the tranquillity of Göttingen. Yet Nomiya's spectral presence destabilises something in the city: mysterious guests appear, eerie discoveries are made in the forest and, as the past becomes increasingly vivid, the threads of time threaten to unravel. With a literary style reminiscent of W. G. Sebald, Yoko Tawada, and Yu Miri, The Place of Shells is an astounding exploration of the strange orbits of memory and the haunting presence of the past. [Paperback]
"A work of great delicacy and seriousness. Ishizawa anchors the temporal and the ghostly with a transfixing pragmatism, and the result is a shifting, tessellated kaleidoscope of memory, architecture, history and grief." —Jessica Au
”This attempt to imprint upon humanity the experiences of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in a way that only a novel can achieve deserves to be highly esteemed.” —Yoko Ogawa
”Here we find a form of language that attempts to venture, dancing, into a past enveloped in silence.” —Yoko Tawada
Central Otago Couture: The Eden Hore Collection by Jane Malthus and Claire Regnault, with photographs by Derek Henderson $70
In 1975, a makeshift museum opened on a farm in the tussocked hills of the Maniototo region of Central Otago. The main feature of this new attraction was the more than 220 high-end fashion garments on display. It has been called one of the most significant collections of its kind in Australasia. And it was housed in an old tractor shed. It had been amassed by J Eden Hore, a successful but quietly spoken high-country farmer — a man of many contrasts. He embodied and boldly defied the stereotype of the ' Southern Man' , confidently forging his own idiosyncratic path through life. Central Otago Couture tells the compelling story of his string of eccentric and memorable obsessions, from Miss New Zealand shows to a menagerie of animals, at the centre of which was his collection of over 270 high-fashion garments. The collection' s continued existence, acquired by the Central Otago District Council, honours and recognises the skills of New Zealand creatives and designers of the 1970s and 1980s, and represents a unique slice of couture fashion not found anywhere else in the country. To this end, fashion photographer Derek Henderson has captured these extraordinary garments in the empty majesty of the Central Otago landscapes that Eden Hore loved, bringing these stories to life for a new generation. [Hardback]
Dysphoria Mundi by Paul B. Preciado $48
A mutant text assembled from essays, philosophy, poetry and autofiction that captures a moment of profound change and possibility. Rooted in the isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic, and taking account of the societal convulsions that have ensued, Preciado tries to make sense of our times from within the swirl of a revolutionary present moment. The central thesis of this monumental work is that dysphoria, to be understood properly, should not be seen as a mental illness but rather as the condition that defines our times. Dysphoria is an abyss that separates a patriarchal, colonial and capitalist order hurtling toward its end from a new way of being that, until now, has been seen as unproductive and abnormal but is in fact the way out of our current predicament. With echoes of visionaries such as William S. Burroughs and Kathy Acker, Preciado's theoretical writing is propelled by lyric power while providing us with a critical toolbox full of new concepts that can guide our thinking and our actions: transition, cognitive emancipation, denormalization, disidentification, 'electronic heroin', digital coups, necro-kitsch. Dysphoria Mundi is Preciado's most accessible and significant work to date, in which he makes sense of a world in ruins around us and maps a joyous, radical way forward. [Paperback with French flaps]
"How lucky we are to have Paul Preciado as companion and interpreter of all we've just been through, with a global pandemic — luckier still is the gift of his revolutionary optimism, which runs through his thorough, gritty analysis of our current predicament. If you're tired of ricocheting between neofascists and doomer dudes, here comes Dysphoria Mundi to recast our situation as ‘the most beautiful (or devastating) collective adventure we have ever embarked on’, and give us new strategies and inspiration to reconceptualise — and stay on — the ride." —Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts
"Paul Preciado's singular genius is for writing vividly within the immediacy of everyday life, and then also unraveling from there the deeper historical forces that shape those moments. In Dysphoria Mundi we learn how the invisible traces of a virus thread bodies and societies together, lacing us into shifting regimes of power and commodification. Preciadio has that rare ability to lead the reader through familiar situations to unexpected conceptual insight. An essential thinker for the contemporary world." —McKenzie Wark, author of Reverse Cowgirl
”This monumental work brings the commitments of the bibliophile to bear on a time and a world now irreversibly out of joint. Drawing on theories of language, mind, technology, immunology to retell a story of this world, Preciado's work more firmly shatters the binaries responsible for the destruction of love and futurity." —Judith Butler
Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix (translated from French by Helen Stevenson) $43
In November 2021, an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants from France to the United Kingdom capsized in the Channel causing the death of 27 people on board. Despite receiving numerous calls for help, the French authorities wrongly told the migrants they were in British waters and had to call the British authorities for help. By the time rescue vessels arrived on the scene, all but two of the migrants had died. The narrator of Delecroix's fictional account of the events is the woman who took the calls. Accused of failing in her duty, she refuses to be held more responsible than others for this disaster. Why should she be more responsible than the sea, than the war, than the crises behind these tragedies? A shocking, moral tale of our times, Small Boat reminds us of the power of fiction to illuminate our darkest crimes. [Paperback]
”Following the disastrous deaths of 27 people, when a dinghy capsizes while crossing the Channel, the book’s narrator — who works for the French authorities and who had refused to send a rescue team — attempts to justify the indefensible and clear her conscience. In a world where heinous actions often have no consequence, where humanity’s moral code appears fragile, where governments can condemn whole swathes of society to poverty or erasure, Small Boat explores the power of the individual and asks us to consider the havoc we may cause others, the extent to which our complacency makes us complicit – and whether we could all do better. A gut-punch of a novel. “ —judges’ citation, International Booker Prize 2025
There’s a Monster Behind the Door by Gaëlle Bélem (translated from French by Laëtitia Saint-Loubert and Karen Fleetwood) $42
The name Dessaintes is one to reckon with. A bombastic, violent and increasingly dangerous clan, little do they know that their downfall is being chronicled by one of their own. This is La Reunion in the 1980s: high unemployment and low expectations, the legacy of postcolonialism. One little girl makes a bid for escape from her sadistic parents' reign of terror and turns to school for salvation. Rich in the history of the island's customs and superstitions, and driven by a wild, offbeat humour, this picaresque tale manages to satirize the very notion of freedom available in this French territory, and perhaps even the act of writing itself and where it might lead you. [Paperback]
“A rollicking, sardonic picaresque set on the French outpost of La Réunion in the. 1980s. The novel has important things to say about colonialism and society, but it’s also tremendous fun — darkly funny, acerbic, energetic. There’s scarcely a dull moment on the page, and the translation is remarkably slick.” —judges’ citation, Republic of Consciousness Prize 2025
”A tour-de-force as volcanic as the little island of La Reunion, a tiny sliver of France marooned in the Indian Ocean, ‘a heap of rubble on the edge of the world’. The narrator of Gaëlle Bélem's novel, a little girl no-one wanted, the unloved daughter of the Dessaintes, is determined to be someone, to tell the story of her family, and through them the story of an island founded on slavery, poverty, cruelty and superstition with a caustic wit and a keen eye. It is a tragi-comedy worthy of Zola, candid and unflinching, yet shot through with humour and poignancy and even a glimmer of hope. Belem's novel is a joyous discovery and in Laetitia Saint-Loubert and Karen Fleetwood she has found translators alert to the nuances of French and Creole and to the poetry threaded through this startling debut.” —Frank Wynne
Pox Romana: The plague that shook the Roman world by Colin Elliott $70
In the middle of the second century AD, Rome was at its prosperous and powerful apex. The emperor Marcus Aurelius reigned over a vast territory that stretched from Britain to Egypt. The Roman-made peace, or Pax Romana, seemed to be permanent. Then, apparently out of nowhere, a sudden sickness struck the legions and laid waste to cities, including Rome itself. This fast-spreading disease, now known as the Antonine plague, may have been history's first pandemic. Soon after its arrival, the Empire began its downward trajectory toward decline and fall. In Pox Romana, historian Colin Elliott offers a comprehensive, wide-ranging account of this pivotal moment in Roman history. Did a single disease — its origins and diagnosis still a mystery — bring Rome to its knees? Carefully examining all the available evidence, Elliott shows that Rome's problems were more insidious. Years before the pandemic, the thin veneer of Roman peace and prosperity had begun to crack: the economy was sluggish, the military found itself bogged down in the Balkans and the Middle East, food insecurity led to riots and mass migration, and persecution of Christians intensified. The pandemic exposed the crumbling foundations of a doomed Empire. Arguing that the disease was both cause and effect of Rome's fall, Elliott describes the plague's ‘pre-existing conditions’ (Rome's multiple economic, social, and environmental susceptibilities); recounts the history of the outbreak itself through the experiences of physician, victim, and political operator; and explores postpandemic crises. The pandemic's most transformative power, Elliott suggests, may have been its lingering presence as a threat both real and perceived. [Hardback]
”Enlightening. Elliott expertly draws on trace evidence such as census records, real estate contracts, and paleoclimate research to make his case. It's an informative history that serves to encourage better pandemic preparedness today." —Publishers Weekly
Mother Naked by Glen James Brown $38
The City of Durham, 1434. Out of a storm, an aging minstrel arrives at the cathedral to entertain the city's most powerful men. Mother Naked is his name, and the story he's come to tell is the Legend of the Fell Wraith: the gruesome 'walking ghost' some say slaughtered the nearby village of Segerston forty years earlier. But is this monster only a myth, born from the dim minds of toiling peasants? Or does the Wraith - and the murders - have roots in real events suffered by those fated to a lifetime of labour? As Mother Naked weaves the strands of the mystery — of class, religion, art and ale — the chilling truth might be closer to his privileged audience than they could ever imagine. Taking its inspiration from a single payment entered into Durham's Cathedral rolls, 'Modyr Nakett' was the lowest-paid performer in over 200 years of records. Set against the traumatic shadow of the Black Death and the Peasant's Revolt, Mother Naked speaks back from the margins, in a fury of imaginative recuperation. [Paperback]
”Exhilarating, freewheeling, brilliantly plotted and politically scathing, Mother Naked is a tour de force of language and style, and absolutely a novel for our times.” —Preti Taneja
Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda (translated from Spanish by Julia Sanches and Heather Cleary) $35
In the linked stories of Reservoir Bitches, thirteen Mexican women prod the bitch that is Life as they fight, sew, skirt, cheat, cry, and lie their way through their tangled circumstances. From the all-powerful daughter of a cartel boss to the victim of transfemicide, from a houseful of spinster seamstresses to a socialite who supports her politician husband by faking Indigenous roots, these women spit on their own reduction and invent new ways to survive, telling their stories in bold, unapologetic voices. At once social critique and black comedy, Reservoir Bitches is a raucous debut from one of Mexico's most thrilling new writers. [Paperback]
”Reservoir Bitches is a blisteringly urgent collection of interconnected stories about contemporary Mexican women. It absolutely bangs from the first page to the last. It’s extremely funny but deadly serious and we loved the energy and flair of the dual translators’ approach. It packs an enormous political and linguistic punch but is also subtle, revelatory and moving about the ways in which these women hustle, innovate, survive or don’t, in a world of labyrinthine dangers. This book weaves the riotous testimony of the living and the dead to create an expletive-rich feminist blast of Mexican literature. “ —judges’ citation, International Booker Prize 2025
How to Leave the World by Marouane Bakhti (translated from French by Lara Vergnaud) $40
Everyone is asking about his identity. Gay? Muslim? French? Moroccan? Instead of choosing a side, he writes a book. A book about the forest and the city, Paris and Tangiers, shame and forgiveness, dating apps and spiritual discovery. A book about growing up as a diaspora kid in rural France, with desires that want to emerge at any cost. Told in mesmerising prose, How to Leave the World is a beautiful non-answer. [Paperback]
One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This by Omar El Akkad $38
As an immigrant, Omar El Akkad believed the West would be a place of freedom and justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the various Wars on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests and more, and watching the slaughter in Gaza, he has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. This powerful book is a chronicle of that painful realisation, a moral grappling with what it means — as a citizen of the US, as a father — to carve out some sense of possibility during these devastating times. [Paperback]
”This book is a howl from the heart of our age. I struggle to find more precise wording that might capture its ferocious, fracturing rage, as it seeks to describe the indescribable, make coherent an increasingly incoherent world.” —Richard Flanagan
”It is difficult to understand the nature of a true rupture while it is still tearing through the fabric of our world. Yet that is precisely what Omar El Akkad has accomplished, putting broken heart and shredded illusions into words with tremendous insight, skill and courage. A unique and urgently needed book.” —Naomi Klein
The Fermentation Kitchen: Recipes and techniques for kimchi, kombucha, koji, and more by Sam Cooper $48
Explore a wide range of authentic and adapted techniques from across cultures and continents and harness bacteria, yeast, and fungus to create a variety of ferments to add flavour to dishes, boost gut health, and give perishable produce a new lease of life. Reconnect with these natural processes and learn to incorporate ferments into your everyday cooking with guides to flavour, texture and aroma alongside recipe ideas serving as inspiration. [Hardback]
”Definitely the best koji book in the world written in English by far!” —Haruko Uchishiba, founder of The Koji Fermentaria
Cities Made Differently by David Graeber and Nika Dubrovsky $40
Full of playful graphics, provocative questions, and curious facts, this book asks what makes a city and how we might make them differently. What makes a city a city? Who says? Drafted over decades out of a dialogue between artist and author Nika Dubrovsky, the late anthropologist David Graeber, and Nika's then four-year-old son, this delightful and provocative book opens a space for invention and collaboration. Fusing anthropology, literature, play, and drawing, the book is essentially a visual essay that asks us to reconsider our ideas about cities and the people who inhabit them. Drawing us into a world of history and myth, science and imagination, Graeber and Dubrovsky invite us to rethink the worlds we inhabit — because we can, and nothing is too strange or too wonderful to be true. With inspired pictures and prompts, Cities Made Differently asks what a city is, or could be, or once was. Sleeping at the bottom of the ocean? Buried in lava? What were those cities of long ago, and what will the cities of the future be? They might be virtual, ruled by AI, or islands of beautiful architecture afloat in seas of greenery. They might be utopian places of refuge or refugee camps as far as the eye can see. On land, underground or aloft, excavated or imagined, cities, this book tells us in provocative and funny ways, can be anything we want them to be-and what we want them to be can tell us something about who we are. [Paperback]
An Architecture of Hope: Reimagining the prison, Restoring a house, Rebuilding myself by Yvonne Jewkes $48
Should architecture be used for punishment? How might the spaces we inhabit nurture or damage us? How can we begin to start over after the worst has happened? Criminologist Yvonne Jewkes grapples with these questions every day as the world's leading expert on rehabilitative prison design; she also faces them in her personal life when her partner of 25 years leaves her in the middle of a nightmare renovation project and then lockdown sees her trapped there. Used to fighting the punitive prison system to create spaces that encourage reflection, healing, even hope for those incarcerated, she must learn to be similarly compassionate to herself, as she considers what might help someone at the lowest point in their life to rebuild. There are 11.5 million prisoners worldwide, and most of them will eventually be released back into society. Yvonne asks, 'Who would you rather have living next door to you? Or sitting on the train next to your daughter? Someone who has been treated with decency in an environment that has helped to heal them and instilled hope for their future? Or someone who has effectively been caged and dehumanised for years?' Challenging our expectations of what prisons are for, she takes us along their corridors, into cells, communal spaces, visitors' areas, and staffrooms, to the architects' studios where they are designed, and even into her own home, to show us the importance of an architecture of hope in the face of despair. [Hardback]
”A book full of insights to illuminate the way we look at architecture. Jewkes's beautiful descriptions not only evoke the feel of the air in a space, but also reveal the moral significance of its design. So refreshingly distinctive from other types of prison books — a beautiful meditation on the universal need for sanctuary, what it means when it is taken away from us, and the courage it takes to reclaim it.” —Andy West
”Yvonne Jewkes takes a vital question — what are prisons for? — and turns it into a much wider and beautifully written reflection on the meaning of home. Her book is full of hard-won authority and expertise conveyed in tenderly human ways.” —Joe Moran
Einstein in Kafkaland: How Albert fell down the rabbit hole and came up with the universe by Ken Krimstein $55
A fascinating and superbly executed graphic biography. During the year that Prague was home to both Albert Einstein and Franz Kafka from 1911-1912, the trajectory of the two men's lives wove together in uncanny ways — as did their shared desire to tackle the world's biggest questions in Europe's strangest city. In stunning words and pictures, Einstein in Kafkaland reveals the untold story of how their worlds wove together in a cosmic battle for new kinds of truth. For Einstein, his lost year in Prague became a critical bridge set him on the path to what many consider the greatest scientific discovery of all time, his General Theory of Relativity. And for Kafka, this charmed year was a bridge to writing his first masterpiece, ‘The Judgment’. Based on diaries, lectures, letters, and papers from this period amid a planet electrifying itself into modernity, Einstein in Kafkaland brings to life the emergence of a new world where art and science come together in ways we still grapple with today. [Hardback]
"Clever, charming, amusing, and just plain brilliant. Ken Krimstein is the most inventive graphic biographer on the planet-and certainly the only one who could explain both Einstein and Kafka. A page turner on gravity and relativity!" —Kai Bird
Squares and Other Shapes with Joseph Albers $25
This book uses the vivid artworks of Josef Albers to guide small children through a wide range of geometrics, one artwork per page, beginning with squares and returning to them as a familiar refrain throughout. The variations between the vibrant shapes adds to the book’s visual richness, and the accompanying text provides an engaging commentary that will encourage discussion. Josef Albers was a leading pioneer of 20th-century Modernism, best known for his ‘Homages to the Square’ paintings and his publication Interaction of Colour. Albers was a teacher, a writer, a painter, and a theorist. In this attractive book, his art is used to teach shapes, one of the most important concepts for young children to learn. [Board book]
The Republic of Consciousness Prize recognises the vital role of small presses (those with fewer than five employees) in bringing excellent and often sidestream fiction to publication. There are always new and satisfying discoveries to be made on this list. Small presses enlarge the gene-pool of literature, allowing new possibilities and evolutions. Read what the judges have to say about the short-listed books this year, and make your selection. Books can be dispatched by overnight courier or collected from our door.
CÉLINA by Catherine Axelrad, translated by Philip Terry (Les Fugitives) $38
“Célina is a quiet book, written with great integrity. It tells the story of a young woman, born into poverty, who works as a maid in the household of Victor Hugo. In restrained and unsentimental prose it illuminates lives forgotten by history.”
In the late 1850s, Célina, a young girl aged fifteen, takes up work as a maid for the Hugo family in Guernsey. There she encounters the delicate balance between the professional and the personal, and the obligations upon her as her livelihood is at stake. Célina navigates a life of hardship and loss, but not without crucial moments of pleasure and pride. In a voice full of the innocence of youth, yet studded with fine observations about her surroundings, her perspective offers a nuanced, potentially challenging portrait of the man and the artist. Axelrad's fictional account is based on cryptic notes found in Victor Hugo's diaries as well as letters from his wife.
”Pitch-perfect, and so light yet so profound. All of Axelrad's books have at their centre a silent, vulnerable young woman, but also one who is tough and resilient, totally unsentimental but deeply responsive and actually very intelligent. How such a person emerges out of such apparent silence is the wonder of her work. Célina is as quiet and devastating a novel as I have read in a long time. Unforgettable.” —Gabriel Josipovici
”Living in exile in the Channel Islands, the irrepressibly philandering author of Les Misérables went through what is called his ‘Chambermaid Period’. In this moving short novel, Catherine Axelrad gives us the great man and his retinue, his house and his mania for Gothic décor, the island and the threatening sea, all through the eyes of a chambermaid—not a fantasy maid, but the real girl from Alderney whose death in 1861 saddened the whole Hugolian establishment. The poverty, ill-health and exploitation of working folk and especially of the young girls who are brought to life here deepen the understanding of what Hugo’s great novel was really about. In this lively translation by Philip Terry, Axelrad’s portrait of a normal yet unique Victorian household seen from ‘downstairs’ is a true gem.” —David Bellos
HOW TO LEAVE THE WORLD by Marouane Bakhti, translated by Lara Vergnaud (Divided Publishing) $40
“An urgent, bleakly funny, fragmentary account of displacement, queer desire, and finding a place in the world. Using a collage technique, Bakhti has produced an outstanding novel about identity and endurance.”
Everyone is asking about his identity. Gay? Muslim? French? Moroccan? Instead of choosing a side, he writes a book. A book about the forest and the city, Paris and Tangiers, shame and forgiveness, dating apps and spiritual discovery. A book about growing up as a diaspora kid in rural France, with desires that want to emerge at any cost. Told in mesmerising prose, How to Leave the World is a beautiful non-answer.
THERE’S A MONSTER BEHIND THE DOOR by Gaëlle Bélem, translated by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert (Bullaum Press) $42
“A rollicking, sardonic picaresque set on the French outpost of La Réunion in the. 1980s. The novel has important things to say about colonialism and society, but it’s also tremendous fun — darkly funny, acerbic, energetic. There’s scarcely a dull moment on the page, and the translation is remarkably slick.”
The name Dessaintes is one to reckon with. A bombastic, violent and increasingly dangerous clan, little do they know that their downfall is being chronicled by one of their own. This is La Reunion in the 1980s: high unemployment and low expectations, the legacy of postcolonialism. One little girl makes a bid for escape from her sadistic parents' reign of terror and turns to school for salvation. Rich in the history of the island's customs and superstitions, and driven by a wild, offbeat humour, this picaresque tale manages to satirize the very notion of freedom available in this French territory, and perhaps even the act of writing itself and where it might lead you. Also listed for the 2025 International Booker Prize.
”A tour-de-force as volcanic as the little island of La Reunion, a tiny sliver of France marooned in the Indian Ocean, ‘a heap of rubble on the edge of the world’. The narrator of Gaëlle Bélem's novel, a little girl no-one wanted, the unloved daughter of the Dessaintes, is determined to be someone, to tell the story of her family, and through them the story of an island founded on slavery, poverty, cruelty and superstition with a caustic wit and a keen eye. It is a tragi-comedy worthy of Zola, candid and unflinching, yet shot through with humour and poignancy and even a glimmer of hope. Belem's novel is a joyous discovery and in Laetitia Saint-Loubert and Karen Fleetwood she has found translators alert to the nuances of French and Creole and to the poetry threaded through this startling debut.” —Frank Wynne
INVISIBLE DOGS by Charles Boyle (CB Editions) $36
“An offbeat, elegantly written tale about two authors marooned an exchange programme in an unnamed totalitarian country. The narrative voice is great company, by turns droll, plaintive and ruminative. It’s whimsical but controlled, and surprisingly compulsive for a largely plotless novel.”
Invisible Dogs is the travel diary of an English writer invited to a country in which there are no dogs – but he keeps seeing them, vanishing around corners. There are rumours of dogs gathering in the mountains, preparing for an assault on the city.
”Invisible Dogs is such a direct, lucid text that the reader might mistake it for a simple record of a visit to an authoritarian country. But Boyle’s wry and wiry prose, an invisible dog in itself, makes an eye contact you can’t break and produces thereafter a quietly deadly picture of the viewed and the viewer, the destination and the traveller.” —M. John Harrison
”Funny, sinister, thought-moving like light, subtly then increasingly terrifying. Its intelligence reads like relief. Its determination not to language- or life-launder leaves it and the experience of reading it clean and cleansing re the shining and the very dark and the strangeness of us.” —Ali Smith
MOTHER NAKED by Glen James Brown (Peninsula Press) $38
“Set in the fifteenth century and narrated by an irrepressible bard called Mother Naked, this novel is bawdy, funny and tragic. The voice of Mother Naked is entirely authentic. Both an entertaining read and a serious work of historical fiction.”
The City of Durham, 1434. Out of a storm, an aging minstrel arrives at the cathedral to entertain the city's most powerful men. Mother Naked is his name, and the story he's come to tell is the Legend of the Fell Wraith: the gruesome 'walking ghost' some say slaughtered the nearby village of Segerston forty years earlier. But is this monster only a myth, born from the dim minds of toiling peasants? Or does the Wraith - and the murders - have roots in real events suffered by those fated to a lifetime of labour? As Mother Naked weaves the strands of the mystery — of class, religion, art and ale — the chilling truth might be closer to his privileged audience than they could ever imagine. Taking its inspiration from a single payment entered into Durham's Cathedral rolls, 'Modyr Nakett' was the lowest-paid performer in over 200 years of records. Set against the traumatic shadow of the Black Death and the Peasant's Revolt, Mother Naked speaks back from the margins, in a fury of imaginative recuperation.
”Exhilarating, freewheeling, brilliantly plotted and politically scathing, Mother Naked is a tour de force of language and style, and absolutely a novel for our times.” —Preti Taneja
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21 March 2025
A conversation about hoarding, about collecting scraps of material and balls of wool, lead me to this delightful book. (Thank you to my colleague for their recommendation.) If you are a maker you will understand the problem of, and the desire for, a wardrobe just for fabric, wool, art supplies, and other ‘useful’ materials. You will also know the beauty of changing something from an remnant into an item; — something that has a new lease of life, whether that is practical or simply to behold. If I could do one thing, and one thing only, it would be to make. Current sewing projects include recutting a vintage velvet dress (some rips, some bicycle chain grease) into a new dress, and, recently finished, a long-forgotten half-made blouse — fabric a bedsheet from the op shop. So I felt completely at home in Bound. And I devoured it with pleasure over one weekend.
This is a book about a sewing journey, and a discovery journey. It’s about the end of things and the beginning of things. All those threads that tangle, yet also weave a story about who we are, where we come from and, even possibly, needle piercing the cloth, stitching a path to somewhere new.
Maddie Ballard’s sewist diary follows her life through lockdown, through a relationship, from city to city, and from work to study, all puncutated with pattern pieces, scissors cutting and a trusty sewing machine. Each essay focuses on a garment she is making, from simple first steps — quick unpick handy—to more complex adventures and later to considered items that incorprate her Chinese heritage. These essays capture the joys and frustrations of making, the dilemmas of responsible making (ethically and environmentally), the pleasure of repurposing and zero-waste sewing, and our relationship with clothes to make us feel good, to capture who we are, and conversely to obscure us. The essays are also a candid and thoughtful exploration of personal relationships and finding one’s place in the world. The comfort of one’s clothes and its metaphorical companion of being comfortable in one’s own skin brushing up sweetly here, like a velvet nap perfectly aligned.
The book is dotted with sweet illustrations by Emma Dai’an Wright of Ballard’s sewing projects, reels of thread, and pesky clothes moths. The essays are cleverly double meaning in many cases. ‘Ease’ being a sewing term, but also in this essay’s case an easing into a new flat; ‘Soft’ the feel of merino, but also the lightness of moths’ wings; ‘Undoing’ the errors that happen in sewing and in life that need a remake. There’s ‘Cut One Pair’ and' ‘Cut One Self’. This gem of a book is published by a small press based in Birmingham, The Emma Press, focused on short prose works, poetry and children’s books. (They also published fellow Aotearoa author Nina Mingya Powles’ Tiny Moons.) Bound: A Memoir of Making and Re-Making is thoughtful, charming and a complete delight. What seems light as silk brings us the hard selvege of decisions, the needle prick of questions, and the threads that both fray and bind. Bravo Maddie Ballard and here’s to many more sewing and writing projects.
From adventures across untamed landscapes, to shapeshifting creatures, to kids finding their way and their culture, here is a selection of best-sellers from VOLUME for 9-14 year olds. These engaging books light the fire of the imagination. They encourage curiosity, understanding and empathy. Some are standout adventures, while others quietly reveal.
Award-winning author Stacy Gregg won the Margaret Mahy Book of Year at last year’s children’s book awards for her superb Nine Girls. This was an important book for Gregg and was a departure from her highly polished pony club titles. Here the author has skin in the game; — it’s her childhood, and her journey in te ao Māori which resonates on every page giving this adventure story that extra bite. But it is the protaganist, Titch, who will stay with you. It’s the late 1970s and Dad has been made redundant. It’s time to pack up and move from Remuera to Ngāruawāhia — a culture shock for TItch and her sister, but also the stuff of holidays and relatives with tall tales. One tall tale takes hold: Gold!
Nine Girls is a coming-of-age story about family, culture and friendship. It takes on big issues like racism, the emotional challenges of illness, and facing death. And with the brilliant Titch at the centre and Gregg’s masterful story-telling this is an absolute winner.
I can’t stop recommending Brown Bird by Jane Arthur. I love this book. Rebecca is the best timid character and Brown Bird has flown straight into the realm of a VOLUME Favourite. Why? One: there’s a map! Two: there’s the wonderful Rebecca and the delightful Chester. Three: Brown Bird is a story about friendship. Four: It’s a spot-on depiction of that moment in childhood — Rebecca is eleven — when things change, emotionally and physically. Five: It deals with emotions with honesty and care. Rebecca’s anxiety and frustration is all there and well articulated, but so too is her kindness and tenacity. Six: I love the quietness of Brown Bird. It’s a book that draws you in, lets you think, and also makes you smile. And Seven: It’s sweetly written. Brown Bird is an excellent book for anyone who’s taken a while to believe in themselves.
The Mapmakers’ Race by Eirlys Hunter is a superbly well-paced adventure. Meet the Santander family - explorers and mapmakers. When Ma misses the train, Sal, the twins Joe and Francie, along with young Humphrey, are on their own, making their way to Grand Prospect as entrants in the Great Mapmakers' Race, a competition to map a railway route through the uncharted wilderness from Grand Prospect to the port at New Coalhaven. The fastest team wins the prize, and the best map, the grand prize, will become the new railway. And all this needs to be done in 28 days!
A highly enjoyable read-aloud or keep-to-yourself. The Mapmakers’ Race will have some children reaching for ink and paper to become wondrous mapmakers, and others out in the wilderness, exploring and making tracks. Charming, exciting and just a little dangerous.
And there’s a sequel! The Uprising brings us more daring;—this time high up in the mountains of Cruxcia with villians and unlikely heroes, and an environmental scam to scupper!
Ella loves horses. She loves her gran Grizzly and her home in a southern rural town. She’s most at home on her pony Magpie cantering across the hills, especially at her favourite time of the day — the grimmelings — a time when magic can happen.
The Grimmelings is a gripping story of a girl growing up, of secrets unfolded, and a vengeful kelpie. Like her equally excellent previous children’s book, Red Rocks (now an exciting TV series), King cleverly entwines the concerns of a young teen with an adventure story steeped in mythology. In Red Rocks, a selkie plays a central role, here it is the kelpie. The beauty of The Grimmelings lies in its adventure and in the courage of a girl and her horse, who together may withstand a powerful being, and maybe even break a curse! Laced with magical words, intriguing mythology, and plenty of horses, it’s a compelling and emotional ride.
When Han Kang was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, the judges said: “Han Kang’s intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life. Her empathy for vulnerable, often female, lives is palpable, and reinforced by her metaphorically charged prose. She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in a poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose.” In Han Kang’s new book, the protagonist travels to her friend Inseon’s house on the Korean island of Jeju, to save Inseon’s bird after Inseon has been airlifted to hospital following an accident. She must reach Inseon's house at all costs, but the icy wind and snow squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save Inseon's bird — or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn't yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness which awaits her at her friend's house. There, the long-buried story of Inseon's family surges into light, in dreams and memories passed from mother to daughter, and in the archive painstakingly assembled at the house, documenting a terrible massacre on the island of 30,000 civilians, murdered in 1948-49. We Do Not Part is a hymn to friendship, a eulogy to the imagination, and above all a powerful indictment against forgetting.
Come down to earth with a book! A selection of books from our shelves. Click through to find out more:
In the Yolŋu language, it seems, there is a fourth tense, which conveys the reality that something that has happened is still happening now and will always be happening. (I suppose, by extension, something that happens is also always just about to happen.) Certainly whatever it is that assails us through what we call our memory is not something that no longer exists. Whatever happened in the past cannot cease to exist, even if we somehow manage to shrug our contact with it. Certainly whatever it is that we call literature, or story, exists perpetually outside the usual tenses we impose upon ourselves for shallowly practical reasons. For some reason, although often composed in the past tense, a story clutches us in a perpetual now, endlessly accessible but itself unaffected by our access. Richard Flanagan’s remarkable book Question 7 is an interrogation of the ways he has responded, voluntarily or otherwise, or could perhaps respond, to the elements of his life that have affected him through experience or memory, that are affecting him now through experience or memory, and will always affect him, it seems, through experience or memory. Some of these elements are undeniably traumas in themselves: his near-drowning in a whitewater canoeing accident, or the enslavement of his father as a prisoner of war and the nuclear bombs that marked a new access of death and yet saved his father’s life, enabling the author to be conceived; and yet it is not only the traumatic and the dramatic that persist in the fourth tense: small, subtle, beautiful, and tender moments also always exist outside our transactional notions of time. How do all these evers make the experience of our life, and how do these experiences make literature? Flanagan’s writing loops and roves around the unassimilable aspects of his life, returning and returning to the key elements and yet never resolving or anaesthetising them. He writes of his grandmother Mate withstanding the taunts of the baker’s children about her family’s convict heritage: “Mate sat in the dray, eyes averted from the dust kicking up behind it and the baker’s children running alongside. She sat in the dray, she sits in the dray, and even now, long after her death, she is sitting there still, straight, looking past them and towards the future, reinventing herself by reinventing her past, not knowing the past stays with us, that was was, is and shall be, as the baker’s children chant, Crawlers … crawlers, through time and space haunting her and haunting Tom and haunting us all, unable to be unheard: Crawlers … crawlers … crawlers.” Later he writes, “Though it happened then it's still happening now and won't ever stop happening, and that writing about it, that writing about anything, can’t be an opinion about what happened as if it had already happened when it is still happening, still unintelligible, still mysterious, and all writing is trapped in tenses when life isn’t. Life is always happening and has happened and will happen, and the only writing that can ever have any worth confounds time and stands outside of it, swims with it and flies with it and dives deep within it…” I wonder, though, is it literature’s purpose to communicate experience and perpetuate it and explore it, as we like to think, or to neutralise, at least a bit, the threat that experience has for us, a threat that could seem for us an unwithstandable threat were we not able withstand it by the articulation of an ersatz version of this experience, a story, a representation that stands in for the experience and provides at least some relief from the clutch that experience has upon us, an editable representation even, a replacement that brings the details of our lives in from the raw and the wild, into the safer mundane refuge within the pale of grammar? And does not memory perhaps work similarly? Do we not replace experience by an account at least to ourselves of this experience, and replace this account with an account of the account and so forth, until all we have is a little story, an artefact, a tame work, that we could as easily forget as remember? Do we crave nothing more than anaesthesia? Whatever process is occurring, Question 7 is a compelling account of the author grappling with the elements of the past, so to call it, that press themselves so forcefully against him. If he survives this pressure, what will he become and how will these elements arrange themselves around him in whatever form he allows or compels them to resolve? For those who write, writing is both the arena and the product of the assimilation of experience, whatever this does to experience itself. After a period of mystical dissolution in the Tasmanian wilderness that followed his drowning, Flanagan returned to the world of the partial and the incomplete, the world of entities and fracture, the practical world, the world of human congress: “Somehow the confusion, the falseness, the incomprehension not only of others but of myself, and all the pain that these things brought, somehow this was also the very condition of living that would soon return.” That’s life.
Replenish your reading pile with these new arrivals, still fresh from their cartons! Books can be sent by overnight courier or collected from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.
Changing My Mind by Julian Barnes $30
"We always believe that changing our mind is an improvement, bringing a greater truthfulness to our dealings with the world and other people. It puts an end to vacillation, uncertainty, weak-mindedness. It seems to make us stronger and more mature. Well, we would think that, wouldn't we?" In this engaging and erudite essay, critically acclaimed writer Julian Barnes explores what is involved when we change our minds: about words, about politics, about books; about memories, age, and time. [Paperback]
”Provocative and entertaining.” —Independent
Bookish: How reading shapes our lives by Lucy Mangan $50
As a child, Lucy Mangan was reading all the time, using books to navigate the challenges and complexities of this world and many others. As an adult, she uses her new relationship with literature to seize upon the most important question — (how) do books prepare us for life? This account of Mangan’s reading life starts at the cusp of teenage, when everything — including the way we read — undergoes a not-so-subtle transformation. Here, Mangan vividly recounts her metamorphosis from young bookworm to bookish adult, from the way school curricula can impact our relationship with literature to the growing pains of swapping the pleasures of re-reading for those of book-hoarding. Revisiting the books of all genres — from thrillers and bonkbusters to historical sagas and apocalyptic zombie stories — that ferried her through each important stages of life — falling in love, finding a job, becoming a mother and navigating grief — Bookish is a coming-of-age in books. It's also an ode to our favourite bookish spaces — from the smallest secondhand bookstalls to libraries, glorious big bookshops and our very own book rooms — and a love story to how books not only shelter our souls through hard times and help us find ourselves when we feel lost, but also help us connect with the people we love through shared stories. [Hardback]
Paris 1935 by Jean Follain (translated from French by Kathleen Shields) $36
Jean Follain’s Paris 1935 is an intimate, multi-layered portrait of the capital where he has been living for ten years, a celebration of what a city is at a point in time: priests and prostitutes and poets, shop assistants and shoplifters, immigrants and war-wounded invalids, royalists and revolutionaries, women, men and children all work and play and dream in these streets. [Paperback]
” ‘It is good to cross Paris as though it were a village,’ Jean Follain writes in the opening section of this book. And that is exactly what he goes on to do, refusing ever to see the city in terms of grand abstraction or civic ‘projects’, but always from intricate, surprising detail, the Paris of the petites gens. The unnamed wanderer encounters the city in its teeming particulars, not without irony, but always with compassion, and a strange intimate knowledge of the poor office workers walking with bowed heads, the little cobbler, the black-aproned watchmaker, the old servant woman weeping quietly in a public garden. Whether in poetry or prose, Follain is one of the great modern French writers, a secret garden waiting to be discovered by the curious. The publication of the first English edition of Paris, so nimbly translated by Kathleen Shields, is cause for joy.” —Stephen Romer
”Within Follain’s diorama, thirty-two individual scenes are divided not only by the usual places (‘Department Stores’, ‘Cemeteries’, ‘The Left Bank’), but people (‘Girls’, ‘Women’) as well as the more abstract (‘Solitude’, ‘Paris Spirits’, ‘The Elements’). They do not trace the terrain of a standard map but one where the eye and the mind lead each other gloriously astray with no fear of becoming lost. Kathleen Shields’s translation captures an important aspect of the Parisian diorama, that of the rhythm of prose. It is never enough to merely describe, no matter how detailed. In fragments of lines such as ‘girls with small ears and vast sad cinemas’, and ‘women who sigh as they lace up their high boots but no longer tremble when regiments go by’ the city sings and cries, whispers and moans, layering its longings and memories like masonry. What makes this such a jewel-like niche within literature is the sense we are being told part of an epic more than travelogue as we are guided through the city. Somewhere, above the buildings and parks, looking in through windows at lovers and quarrels, is someone who views every scenario with an innate understanding that bad and good, Paris simply would not be without each exposed human fragment. Their telling will be bound with the next person’s telling, and the next throughout time to create a complete but ever-changing narrative of Paris.” —Tomoé Hill, 3:AM
The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine by Mario Levrero (translated from Spanish by Annie McDermott and Kit Schluter) $35
Widely viewed as one of the most inventive bodies of work from 20th-century Latin America, Mario Levrero's writing is distinguished by its bounteous imagination. In none other of the author's books is this imagination so clearly on display as in The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine, his 1970 debut collection of stories. It gathers a variety of Levrero's earliest and most formally inventive publications, ranging from dazzling single paragraph micro-fictions à la Donald Barthelme to adventurous Lewis Carroll-esque tales of forty pages' length. From the shocking surreal twists of 'Beggar Street' to the Escher-like grammatical maze of 'The Boarding House', via the pseudo-fairy tale classic 'The Basement', this book explores uncanny domestic spaces, using the structures of the stories themselves as tools for re-inventing narrative possibility. [Paperback with French flaps]
"These stories contain Levrero's most secret side and, in a way, 80% of the DNA that made him an extraordinary writer." —Fabian Casas
"One of Latin American literature's most balanced and well-constructed books." —Elvio Gandolfo
And the Walls Became the World All Around by Johanna Ekström and Sigrid Rausing $40
When the celebrated Swedish writer Johanna Ekström found out that she was dying from an eye melanoma she asked her closest friend, Sigrid Rausing, to finish her last book. Rausing transcribed and edited the thirteen handwritten notebooks left by Ekström. The result is a memoir of exceptional depth and intensity, published to critical acclaim in Sweden in 2023. The work showcases Ekström's vivid imagination, writerly precision, and psychological insight, interwoven with Rausing's spare and sober reflections. And the Walls Became the World All Around is a literary experiment, a testament to friendship, and a deep meditation on grief. [Hardback]
”Johanna Ekström's prose towards the end is clear as glass. The last notebooks are amongst the best things she has ever written. Sublime, devastating.” —Dagens Nyheter
”Dreambook, poet's journal, diary of a love lost and an illness that is in part perceptual, this is a book like no other I have read. Intertwined in its very making, there is also a story of friendship and grief. Hypnotic and haunting, the whole is bathed in a northern light that had me reaching for a Bergman classic.” —Lisa Appignanesi
Toward Eternity by Anton Hur $38
In a near-future world, a new technological therapy is quickly eradicating cancer. The body's cells are entirely replaced with nanites — robot or android cells which not only cure those afflicted but leaves them virtually immortal. Literary researcher Yonghun teaches an AI how to understand poetry and creates a living, thinking machine he names Panit, meaning Beloved, in honor of his husband. When Yonghun — himself a recipient of nanotherapy — mysteriously vanishes into thin air and then just as suddenly reappears, the event raises disturbing questions. What happened to Yonghun, and though he's returned, is he really himself anymore? When Dr. Beeko, the scientist who holds the patent to the nanotherapy technology, learns of Panit, he transfers its consciousness from the machine into an android body, giving it freedom and life. As Yonghun, Panit, and other nano humans thrive — and begin to replicate — their development will lead them to a crossroads and a choice with existential consequences. Exploring the nature of intelligence and the unexpected consequences of progress, the meaning of personhood and life, and what we really have to fear from technology and the future, Toward Eternity is a gorgeous, thought-provoking novel that challenges the notion of what makes us human — and how love survives even the end of that humanity. [Paperback]
"Hur is first and foremost one of our best writers. This chilling gem of speculative fiction is written with the restrained elegance and dazzling precision of an expert who can bend, tone, and ultimately alchemise language into a truly singular storytelling experience. You'll never look at the intersections of poetry and biology, and art and technology, the same again. What a delight to witness a writer in complete control of his craft, to experience the thrills of invention as unforgettable as the most canonical cautionary tales of the genre." —Porochista Khakpour
Crypt: Life, death and disease in the Middle Ages and beyond by Alice Roberts $55
The history of the Middle Ages is typically the story of the rich and powerful, there's barely a written note for most people's lives. Archaeology represents another way of interrogating our history. By using cutting-edge science to examine human remains and burials, it is possible to unearth details about how individuals lived and died that give us a new understanding of the past — one that is more intimate and inclusive than ever before. The seven stories in Crypt are not comforting tales. We meet the patients at one of the earliest hospitals in England and the victims of the St Brice's Day Massacre. We see a society struggling to make sense of disease, disability and death, as incurable epidemics sweep through medieval Europe. We learn of a protracted battle between Church and State that led to the murder of Thomas Becket and the destruction of the most famous tomb in England. And we come face to face with the archers who went down with Henry VIII's favourite ship, the Mary Rose. [Hardback]
”A gripping set of tales. Roberts demonstrates how the disciplines of osteoarchaeology, palaeopathology, osteobiology and, newest of all, archaeogenomics, are increasingly used to modify, amplify and even correct written records with all their slant and spin. Fascinating.” —Guardian
One Day: A true story of courage and survival in the Holocaust by Michael Rosen and Benjamin Phillips $30
A poignant and ultimately uplifting picture book based on a true story of an escape from a convoy to Auschwitz. “Get through one day and then on to the next. One day at a time. One day after another.” Eugène Handschuh was a Jewish member of the Resistance in occupied Paris. After he was captured by the Nazis, he was placed on a convoy to Auschwitz. Against all the odds, with the help of strangers and fellow members of the Resistance, Eugène and his father escaped the convoy and survived — when so many others did not. Michael Rosen was inspired to tell this story after discovering his father’s uncle and aunt were on the same convoy as Eugène, but never returned. The remarkable illustrations are by Benjamin Phillips, who also did the wonderful Alte Zachen. [Hardback]
Against Progress by Slavoj Žižek $22
What does 'progress' mean? Can things get better? And how, when we are constantly battered on all sides by deepfakes, doomers and disorienting relativisms, can we make any headway at all in the face of unprecedented ecological, social and political crises? In this collection of iconoclastic essays, Slavoj Zizek disrupts the death-grip that neoliberalists, Trumpian populists, toxic self-improvement industries and accelerationists alike have established on the idea of progress. In a whirlwind tour that takes in everything from gentrification to the theory of relativity, Lacan to Lenin, Putin to Mary Poppins and Taylor Swift to the end of the world, these essays never stop asking hard questions of imagined futures. Nor does Zizek shrink from the hardest question of all: How do we free ourselves from the hypocritical, guilt-ridden dreaming in which we're enmeshed, and begin to build a better world? [Paperback]
Zest: Climbing from depression to philosophy by Daniel Kalderimis $40
Zest is a personal account of how we can seek meaning and joy by facing and accepting our imperfections. Daniel, a Wellington King’s Counsel, describes his journey of depression with humour, wisdom, and philosophy — he sought more than wellness platitudes to manage these struggles. His book connects strands of philosophy from Stoicism and Buddhism, and draws from writings by George Eliot and Iris Murdoch. This is not a manual for how to ‘get well’. It’s for the many people in careers like Kalderimis: the high-fliers and the driven who don’t stop to smell the flowers, then hit the wall and wonder how to get over that wall. Kalderimis’s book can help people see there is no ‘cure’ as such, that they need to embrace this part of them to understand they can still live an enjoyable and successful life. [Paperback]
Pharmacopoeia: A Dungeness notebook by Derek Jarman $26
'I planted a dog rose. Then I found a curious piece of driftwood and used this, and one of the necklaces of holey stones on the wall, to stake the rose. The garden had begun. I saw it as a therapy and a pharmacopoeia.' In 1986 artist and filmmaker, Derek Jarman, bought Prospect Cottage, a Victorian fisherman's hut on the desert sands of Dungeness. It was to be a home and refuge for Jarman throughout his HIV diagnosis, and it would provide the stage for one of his most enduring, if transitory projects - his garden. Conceived of as a 'pharmacopoeia' — an ever-evolving circle of stones, plants and flotsam sculptures all built and grown in spite of the bracing winds and arid shingle — it remains today a site of fascination and wonder. Pharmacopoeia brings together the best of Derek Jarman's writing on nature, gardening and Prospect Cottage. Told through journal entries, poems and fragments of prose, it paints a portrait of Jarman's personal and artistic reliance on the space Dungeness offered him, and shows the cycle of the years spent there in one moving collage. [Paperback with French flaps]
A Northern Wind: Britain, 1962—65 by David Kynaston $33
How much can change in less than two and a half years? In the case of Britain in the Sixties, the answer is: almost everything. From the seismic coming of the Beatles to a sex scandal that rocked the Tory government to the arrival at No 10 of Harold Wilson, a prime minister utterly different from his Old Etonian predecessors. A Northern Wind brings to vivid life the period between October 1962 and February 1965. Drawing upon an unparalleled array of diaries, newspapers and first-hand recollections, Kynaston's masterful storytelling refreshes familiar events — the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Big Freeze, the assassination of JFK, the funeral of Winston Churchill - while revealing in all their variety the experiences of the people living through this history. Major themes complement the compelling narrative: an anti-Establishment mood epitomised by the BBC's controversial That Was The Week That Was; a welfare state only slowly becoming more responsive to the individual needs of its users; and the rise of consumer culture, as Habitat arrived and shopping centres like Birmingham's Bull Ring proliferated. Multi-voiced, multi-dimensional and immersive. [Now in paperback]
”Kynaston's primary aim is to document ‘a ceaseless pageant as, in all its daily variousness, it moves through time’. This he achieves with a breathtaking array of treasures: diaries, provincial newspapers, political speeches, films and novels are woven together to provide a kaleidoscope of contrasting perspectives, defying any attempt to create a neat story of progress or nationhood. This is a richly evocative, thought-provoking and, above all, compassionate study of those who lived through the much-mythologised 1960s. We can only hope that when historians write about our own times, they will extend the same generosity of spirit.” —Selina Todd, TLS
The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey $34
A previous novel from the Booker-winning author of Orbital. Fifteenth-century Oakham, in Somerset; a tiny village cut off by a big river with no bridge. When a man is swept away by the river in the early hours of Shrove Saturday, an explanation has to be found: accident, suicide or murder? The village priest, John Reve, is privy to many secrets in his role as confessor. But will he be able to unravel what happened to the victim, Thomas Newman, the wealthiest, most capable and industrious man in the village? And what will happen if he can't? Moving back in time toward the moment of Thomas Newman's death, the story is related by Reve — an extraordinary creation, a patient shepherd to his wayward flock, and a man with secrets of his own to keep. Through his eyes, and his indelible voice, Harvey creates a medieval world entirely tangible in its immediacy. [Paperback]
”Beautifully rendered, deeply affecting, thoroughly thoughtful.” —New York Times
Mammoth by Eva Baltasar (translated from Catalan by Julia Sanches) $33
Mammoth's protagonist is a disenchanted young lesbian, inexperienced, irritated by life, eager to gestate, and determined to strip everything else down to essentials. She seduces men at random, swaps her urban habitat for an isolated farmhouse, befriends a shepherd, nurses lambs, battles stray cats, waits tables, cleans house, and dabbles in sex work — all in pursuit of life in the raw. This small bomb of a novel, not remotely pastoral, builds to a howling crescendo of social despair, leaving us at the mercy of Eva Baltasar's wild voice. [Paperback]
”A surprising slim novel that trembles with the force of an approaching stampede. Baltasar's sharp and forthright prose (adeptly translated by Julia Sanches) demonstrates how much can lie within one person, through the boiling, enraged voice of the narrator. Baltasar's novel howls to ask: What is a life made according to one's own rules? A quiet but hard-staring fighter of a book, Mammoth is, in a world doomed to end, one woman's strange and powerful cry against her own extinction.” —Mary Marge Locker, New York Times
This Fiction Called Nigeria: The struggle for democracy by Adéwálé Májà-Pearce $37
In this groundbreaking work the essayist and critic Adewale Maja-Pearce delivers a mordant verdict on Nigeria's crisis of democracy. A mosaic of ethnic and religious groups, the most populous country in Africa was fabricated by British colonisers at the turn of the twentieth century. When Nigerians went to the polls to vote in the 2023 elections, they had experienced a quarter century of democracy, after a similar period of almost unbroken military dictatorship. Yet the blessings of self-rule are unclear to many, especially among the more than half of the population living in extreme poverty. Buffeted by unemployment, saddled with debt, rent by bandits and Islamic fundamentalists, Nigeria faces the threat of disintegration. Maja-Pearce shows that recent mobilisations against police brutality, sexism and homophobia reveal a powerful undercurrent of discontent, especially among the country's youth. If Nigeria has a future, he shows here, it is in the hands of the young, unwilling to go on as before. [Paperback]
Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie $38
Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until — betrayed and brokenhearted — she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America – but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve. In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved? A trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, and on our interconnected world. [Paperback]
”Dream Count reads like a feminist War and Peace. Suffused with truth, wit and compassion, this is a magnificent novel that understands the messiness of human motivation and is courageous enough to ask difficult questions. It made me feel frustrated about the world but very good about the state of fiction.” —Sunday Times
”This is a complex, multi-layered beauty of a book. It is deeply and richly feminist. It explores big themes - misogyny, masculinity, race, colonialism, cultural relativism, the abuse of power, both personal and institutional - but it does so subtly, almost imperceptibly ... Dream Count is an extraordinary novel. Please let it not be another decade until Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie returns once more.” —Nicola Sturgeon, New Statesman
Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa $25
Palestine, 1948. A mother clutches her baby son as Israeli soldiers march through the village of Ein Hod. In a split second, he is snatched from her arms and the fate of the Abulheja family is changed forever. Mornings in Jenin is a devastating novel of love and loss, war and oppression, heartbreak and hope, spanning five countries and four generations of one of the most intractable conflicts of our lifetime. [New paperback edition]
”A powerful and passionate insight into what many Palestinians have had to endure since the state of Israel was created. Susan Abulhawa guides us through traumatic events with anger and great tenderness too, creating unforgettable images of a world in which humanity and inhumanity, selflessness and selfishness, love and hate grow so close to each other.” —Michael Palin
”Abulhawa looks into the darkest crevices of lives, conflicts, horrendous injustices, and dares to shine light that can illuminate hidden worlds for us, who are too often oblivious. A major writer of our time, to read Abulhawa is to begin to understand not simply the misinformation we have received for decades about what has gone on in Palestine and the Middle East, but to come to terms with our own resistance to feeling the terror of our own fear of Truth.” —Alice Walker
Violet and the Velvets #1: The Case of the Missing Stuff by Rachael King (with illustrations by Phoebe Morris) $19
Meet Violet Grumble: a music-loving, guitar-toting tween whose dream is to compete at BandChamps. The problem is that none of her friends can play an instrument. Violet won't let that stop her! But things get tougher when the band's gear starts to go missing — what's going on? Can Violet solve the mystery and harness her ADHD powers? Can she help the Velvets overcome stage fright AND beat The Alphas at the final showdown? After all, you only need three chords to play a song ... how hard can it be? [Paperback]
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14 March 2025
How does a word reveal its meaning at the same moment as it becomes strange to us, he wondered. Or should that be the other way round, how does a word become strange to us at the same moment as it reveals its meaning. Same difference, though he was a little surprised. No closer to an answer in any case. Words, experiences, thoughts, the same principle seems to apply, he thought, or certainly its inverse, or complement, or opposite, or whatever. Familiarity suppresses meaning, he thought, the most familiar is that for which meaning is the least accessible, for which meaning has been obscured by wear until a point of comprehensibility has been attained, a point of dullness and comfort, a point of functional usefulness, if that is not a tautology, a point of habituation sufficient for carrying on with whatever there is to which we are inclined to carry on, if there is any such thing to which we are so inclined. Perhaps ‘meaning’ is not the right word. Or ‘strange’. Or the others. I should maybe start again and use other words, or other thoughts, or both, he thought. All philosophical problems can be solved by changing the meanings of the words used to express them, he had somewhere read, or written, or, more dangerously, both. All that is not the same or not exactly the same as to say that the simplest thing carries the most meaning but is too difficult to think about so we complicate it until we can grasp it in our thoughts, at the moment that its meaning is lost, the moment of comprehension, he thought. Again this strange use of the word ‘meaning’, whatever he meant by that, he was no longer sure. The everyday is that to which we are most habituated, that of which we are the most unaware, or the least aware, if this is not the same thing, to help us to survive the stimulation, he thought, a functional repression of our compulsion to be aware, but this comes at the cost of existing less, of being less aware, of becoming blind to those things that are either the simplest or the most important to us or both. Our dullness stops us being overwhelmed, awareness being after all not so much rapture as terror, not that there was ever much difference. Life denuminised, that is not the word, flat. How then to regain the terrible paradise of the instant, awareness, without risking lives or sanity? How to produce the new and be produced by it? These are not the same question but each applies. They are possibly related. Perhaps now, he thought, I should mention this book, Bordering on Miraculous, a collaboration between poet Lynley Edmeades and painter Saskia Leek, as there appear to be some answers here or, if not answers, related effects that you could be forgiven for mistaking for answers even though there are no such things as answers. Near enough. Poetry seems sometimes capable, as often here, of briefly reinstating awareness, as does the discipline of painting, as does the presence of a baby as it simultaneously wipes your mind. And alters time. What a relief, at least temporarily, to lose what made you you, he thought, or remembered, or imagined that he remembered. What a relief to be only aware of that which is right now pressing itself upon you, or aware only, though only aware is the more precise choice. “Which is more miracle: the things / moving through the sky or the eyes that move / to watch them” asks the poet, looking at a baby looking, he assumes. Such simplicities, the early noticings of babies, infant concepts, are the bases of all consciousness, he ventured, all our complexities are built on these. The first act of comprehension, he thought, is to divide something from that which it is not. “A border is / as a border does.” This book, the poems and the paintings in this book, continually address this primal impulse to give entities edges or to bring forth entities through their edges. All knowledge is built from this ‘bordering’, he thought, but it is always fragile, arbitrary, subject to the possibility of revision, more functional than actual. The second act of comprehension is to associate something with something that it is not (“One cannot help but make associations,” the poet writes), but it is never clear to what extent such associations are inherent in the world or to what extent they are mental only, the result of the impulse to associate, he thought. Not that this matters. Everything is simultaneously both separating and connecting, it is too much for us to sustain, we would be overwhelmed, we reach for a word, for an image, for relief. We pacify it with a noun. To some extent. To hold it all at bay. But also perhaps to invite the onslaught, he wondered, perhaps, he thought, the words release what the words hold back, perhaps these words can reconnect while simultaneously holding that experience at bay. Not that that makes any sense, or much. “One / cannot help but make / nouns,” the poet writes, but there is always this tension, he thinks, between accomplishment and insufficiency in language, never resolved, the world plucking at the words and vice-versa: “Something is there that doesn’t love a page.” “It is this kind of ordinary straining / that makes the margins restless.” The most meaningful is that which reaches closest to the meaninglessness that it most closely resembles. He has thought all this but his thoughts have not been clear, he has lost perhaps the capacity to think, not that he ever had such a capacity other than the capacity to think he had it. He feels perhaps he has not been clear but this beautiful book by Edmeades and Leek is clear, these poems and these paintings address the simplest and most difficult things, the simplest are the most difficult, and vice-versa, this conversation, so to call it, between a poet and a painter, reaches down to the bases of their arts, he thought, to the primalities of consciousness, have I made that word up, a gift to us from babies, perhaps the babies we once were. It is not as if we ever escape the impulses we had as babies. A baby comes, the world is changed. “Goodbye to a future / without this / big head / in it.”
Beautiful production, beautiful concept, and beautifully executed. The sixth book in the Kōrero series is a standout. You Are Here is a journey, a journey in language, a going home, a seeking of one’s place in a physical external space, and also in one’s interior self. Where do you belong? How do you go home when time and place have been disrupted? You go home by looking towards your land, your whenua. You find your culture in language, in pattern — in mark-making both literal and metaphorical. Reading Whiti Hereaka’s text, looking into Larkin’s drawings and paintings is mesmerising. Questions are provoked and thoughts step one to the next, building connections between the words and images on the page and the concepts they embody. Here there is a conversation between cousins who share whakapapa, through their words and images. As Hereaka cleverly uses the restrictions of the Fibonacci sequence in her text, Larkin’s work also has a pattern set down. Her drawings precise on the graph paper — pen-to-paper, point-to-point — building intricate relationships in space and on the page. In her artwork you see the conversation with weaving, tāniko, whakario and tukutuku patterns. The patterns building a language of connection, moving in unison with Hereaka’s text as she spirals, doubling her words and her thoughts, as she reaches for the elusive and the sure. As anger surfaces, along with shame, passion and determination. And as the language condenses in line with the sequence’s rules, you follow the pattern out and away to the end. Open this book and find on the first page, three words. “You are here.” They sit quiet, small and a little timidly in this white space. End this book and the same three words appear. “You are here” at the centre and determined, held firmly in a Larkin drawing. But the end is no end, it is another beginning, ready for what comes next. You Are Here is also, like the other books on this series, a place where excellent book production meets the content with purpose and care. (Kudos to Lloyd Jones and Massey University Press for this excellent series.) From the subtle embossed letters on the front cover to the paper stock, it is a tactile object — a book you want to enjoy and hold. You Are Here is both intense and lyrical. It is personal and universal. It is a journey of discovery and a work of strength.
There are new children’s books arriving at VOLUME every week. Here are a few we think you might like.
You will love Clive. He’s adorable. Friendly and gentle, Clive loves playing with his friends and exploring the world. It’s all about hats and plenty of imagination in this boardbook, Clive and his Hats. A sunny yellow hat for wearing in the sandpit, a pointy black magic hat for showing his tricks to Moshi the cat, or out in the rain in his best red fire-hat-and-coat set complete with red gumboots! There’s dress-ups and party hats, a special hat for the art gallery, and delightful tall-eared hats for when you being a rabbit. The Clive books by Jessica Spanyol are gentle and affectionate. They avoid gender stereotypes and celebrate diversity, encourage sharing and the joy of play.
A goodnight book about dreaming and the wonders of a world at night. With its atmospheric colour palette of bluey green with little flashes of contrasting orange, Mr Moon Wakes Up captures a warm gentle night with a full moon perfectly. Here are the long shadows and soft shapes, here are magical creatures in the garden and in the sky. A child bemoans the fact that Mr Moon is always asleep. Too sleepy to do puzzles, play hide-and-seek, or hear exciting adventure stories. But what if Mr Moon is awake when you’re asleep? And so begins a wonderful night of magic and mazes, and of seeing the world anew. This charming story, written and illustrated by Jemima Sharpe captures a similar mood as the classic The Moon Jumpers — it is dreamily illustrated and sweetly written.
How to be a champ when you’re not like the others? Iranian author Payam Ebrahimi started writing stories when he was five, and kept writing through school and study, and work, and various occupations, and luckily for us still keeps writing stories. And luckily for us this one, Champ, is ably translated by Caroline Croskery and illustrated by internationally recognised artist Reza Dalvand. Abtin is the misfit of the Moleski family. Every single member of the family is a champion obsessed with sports and winning. Their portraits hung on the wall, medals adorn their chests. They eat heartily and train all day. Abtin isn’t interested in winning, and his dreams are quite different. The excellent illustrations by Davland add further layers to the humour and pathos of Ebrahimi’s text. This is a powerful story about being yourself in the face of adversity and the pressure to conform. Perfect for the champ in us all, and when we need a little courage!
Jan Medlicott Acorn Fiction Prize winner Whiti Hereaka and artist Peata Larkin, cousins who share the same whakapapa, collaborate in a project based on the Fibonacci number sequence. In a feat of managed imagining, Hereaka's words spiral out to the centre of the book and then back in on themselves to end with the same words with which the text began. As the pattern spools out and then folds back, Peata Larkin's meticulous drawings of tāniko and whakairo and her lush works on silk weave their own entrancing pattern. 'It is my hope that by the time you have walked that path that you are now a different reader and will read those words in a new way,' Hereaka says. You Are Here is a beguiling and important addition to the ‘kōrero’ series.
Each volume in this exquisite series is a collaboration between a writer and an artist, and a discovery (for both readers and participants) of new creative potentials. The series is exemplary publishing — each volume is beautifully produced and a pleasure to read and to own.
Get all six volumes (so far) and get one of these free (6 for the price of 5)!
High Wire — Lloyd Jones x Euan Macleod >>Find out more
Shining Land: Looking for Robin Hyde — Paula Morris x Haru Sameshima >>Find out more
The Lobster's Tale — Chris Price x Bruce Foster >>Find out more
Bordering on Miraculous — Lynley Edmeades x Saskia Leek >>Find out more
Little Doomsdays — Nic Low x Phil Dadson >>Find out more
You Are Here — Whiti Hereaka x Peata Larkin >>Find out more